AN EMPLOYEE'S STATEMENT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLIII, 5 February 1909, Page 3

AN EMPLOYEE'S STATEMENT.

ALLEGED POLITICAL INFLUENCE. CHRISTCHURCH, Thurs. In an interview with a "Lyttelton Times" reporter a man who has had . practical experience cf the work in the . Addington Railway workshops, and who also served iii the Hillside Workshops, gave his..impressions of lite c--n-, . ditions prevailing. His viqwsi ac summed up in, b^&;,final statement: "There is not much wrong with the way the men work," he said, "but the system is absolutely rotten. It is inefficient and wasteful, and it does not encourage a man to do his best work." In the Hillside shops, he said, the tools were modern and complete, In Addington the supply of tools for the fitters was deficient to a degree. That, meant constant loss of time. Labourers had been put on to iVoiic machines, with the result that competent men spent hours rectifying the blunders of other people, and material was wasted in a fashion that would not be tolerated in a privately-owned workshop." . "Do you mean to say that a man i.« put on to do work for which he is not competent?" asked the reporter. ""Certainly," replied the wol-shops man. "Men got appointments through political influence, and soliie of the foremen and heads of departments do not seem strong enough or conscientious enough to insist that the employees under them shall be efficient. An order ' comes from the head office that a certain"man is to be iaken on, ant] lie get* a place somewhere whether he is competent or not. I have seen men start as fitters who were absolutely incompetent. Mind, I am not condemning all the officers of the shops. The manager at Addington is a good man. The foreman boilernr.aker. who was ; singled out for special blame in the letter from Mr Ronayne, is one of the best men you could find. H e works his men hard and keeps them up to the mark, and they are satisfied because they know that they get fair treatment. There are other men iv responsible positions who are absolute wasters. They are not capable of undertaking, the work that they are supposed to sueprintend." Asked for an instance of the waste' of material to which he had referred, the man. said that last year the Addington shops turned out the first locomotive of a new pattern. The plans were supplied from the head office in Wellington. Three sets of brake gear had to be manufactured at a cost of «bout £60 each time, because the plans were faulty. When the boiler was. put drawn on the. frartie> the steampipes could nbl be got in because of fheir design, arid a new lot of pipes had to ba made. Again the fault lay with the designers. The first locomotive took five months to build, but with the perfected design evolved by a process of costly evperiments it was now possible to build one in less than half the time, ' A concluding question elicited the statement that the workshops men would be very careful about giving evidence against their superiors, because they believed that euch action, would imperil their billets. "Already there are notices up in the shops saying that we are not to give away information," he remarked."Some of us don't mind taking the chance, but a great many of the men won't be in any hurry to come forward with statements against men who may afterwards remain in control." v —•