BUILDING GUILD SCHEME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17708, 17 February 1921, Page 8

BUILDING GUILD SCHEME.

CARPENTERS' PROPOSALS.

ELIMINATION ,OF CONTRACTOR. [BY TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT.] WELLINGTON. Wednesday. A scheme for the adoption of the guilds system is being launched by the Wellington branch of the Associated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. The building guild in Britain, has become firmly established since it began its operations during the war years* and it is now worsting over a wide area, and giving satisfaction to its members, and to the local bodies and individuals whose work it has undertaken. The Wellington scheme is being framed upon the British model. '

'' The ultimate idea is the elimination of the contractor altogether," said the secretary of the Wellington branch yesterday. "We have had this scheme under consideration f for some time, and most of the members of the union are in favour of it. We intend to go ahead with the scheme, of which the nucleuses already in existence. Four of our members are doing a job under a co-operative partnership arrangement. The Building Trades Federation has had such a scheme under consideration, and asked us -to furnish it with our ideas on the point, and we replied that we Were not in a position to do so until we had studied the matter for ourselves.

" The scheme will in all probability be inaugurated by our society in Wellington. Our union'is financially strong enough to do it. We will have to start in a small ■way with small jobs, but we anticipate being' able to take the larger work later. The carpenters employed by private contractors will be absorbed by us as the guild grows. We have in our organisation, men who are capable of taking charge of large jobs, men who can draw plans pnd direct operations. The- development of the scheme in the future may render necessary the employment of an architect, or more than one •architect, if the guild extends to other centres. A fully developed guild would also have its own engineers and its own men to work out estimates, and it woud tend to absorb all the men who are employed in the building trade and in allied trndes, such as-the painters and plumbers. The guild may require ultimately to acquire its own sawmill and produce its own timber."