LABOUR PARLIAMENT DELEGATES. A Question of Wages.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 290, 20 January 1906, Page 6

LABOUR PARLIAMENT DELEGATES. A Question of Wages.

THE Wellington Trades and Labour Council is not going to have any of its delegates dragged into King Dick's Labour Parliament without a protest, so there ! And the Labour Parliament can go hang as far as it is concerned if the Government — that is, the people — don't pay their wages and exes. In fact, the worker refuses to be emancipated any more except at current wages rates. * * » The Wellington Trades and Labour Council isn't likely to drag a working carpenter from the bench to send him away to represent the worker m the Labour Parliament. It is far more likely to select delegates who don't work — except as Trades and Labour Council officials — who are paid all the year round, and who would be paid whether they were delegates to this proposed Labour Parliament, or were not. Will you be good enough to tell us why these delegates should be paid by the people to go and find out something we knew before ? What possible advantage can this Parliament be to the back-country worker, who will share m the expenses of this Parliament, and pay the Wellington Tiades and Labour Council's delegates, if these tremendous personages consont to be dragged forth, at good wages? • • • The Wellington Trades and Labour Council also demands to know the order of procedure before it consents to- lend its august name to the Parliament, and it shows that Trades and Labour Councillmg is a far more important matter to them than either trades or labour If the Government will climb right out of the business, and let the W.T.L.C. into the vacancy, that majestic body will consent — for wages and exes. — to be paid by everybody who doesn't care a straw for the W.T L.C - — to take a rjlace m the Labour Parliament and air its views * • * If the Parliament is of importance to the W.T L.C , the W.T.L C. can afford to' pay for its delegates If it isn't of importance, the Council seems to be playing a bluff hand for a few pounds. Most small bodies of men m New Zealand are ready to blither about any conceivable subject, at any time of the day or night — if the people pay. But, this isn't any reason why the people should pay the W.T.L.C. to shout

things out that don't matter in the least to anybody on earth. * * * If the people of New Zealand, back-country and all, were asked which they regard as preferable and cheaper, to pay the W.T.L.C. delegates to stay at home, or to pay them to go to the Parliament, there is no doubt that, by a sweeping majority, the people would agree to pay a large sum to prevent those gentlemen leaving work to try and set the politics of the country right.