ENGINEERS' RIGHTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21119, 29 February 1932, Page 11

ENGINEERS' RIGHTS.

" LOSS OF AUTHORITY."

PRESIDENTIAL COMPLAINT.

INFLUENCE OF POLITICS. "It has to be remembered that this is an engineering age—engineering enters into the daily life of practically every individual in the community," said Mr. D. K. Blair, of Wellington, in his presidential address last week to the New Zealand Society of Civil Engineers. "Some labour authorities attribute die present depression to machinery displacing labour, but they do not give machinery any credit for creating industries that could not have come into being without it."

Mr. Blair said one of the most serious matters affecting the profession as a whole was the steadily increasing loss of authority of engineers of public bodies over their staffs and the workmen who should be under (heir control. In many instances this control was now only nominal. Political influence and other "pulls" kept unsuitable men in their positions against all efforts of the engineer to discharge them.

Trades unions, workers' committees, and classification systems were gradually undermining the engineer's position until his authority over the employees under his nominal charge had practically vanished, the last straw being the Appeal Board, in which the deciding factor was the stipendiary magistrate, a most estimable man in a Court of law, but totally unqualified to decide whether a man was an efficient tradesman or not.

"Wo old engineers," Mr. Blair said, "who had tho, privilege of holding the full powers necessary to carry out the work we were entrusted with cheaply, expeditiously and free, from faulty workmanship, had the 'pow.-i of engagement and dismissal,' without which 1 hold an engineer cannot efficiently perform his very responsible duties. . . . In tho past both in the shops and on the ships, the foremen, officers and men were happy families, mutually assisting each other, each individual unit carrying his full load, and the Mead-swinging' so prevalent to-day was absent. Of course, trades unionism, as we know it to-day, with all its Communistic ideas, did not exist; tho unions of that time vveie nearly all benefit societies, and therefore only the best tradesmen could gain admission to them."

Mr. Blair said that just as the Railways Commission recommended the removal of the railways from political influence, he had come to the conclusion that engineers would have to do the same in regard to their profession. By this he meant a. strenuous effort to establish the engineer in the rightful position be occupied in the old days. If they succeeded they would benefit the profession and public alike. "As the position now stands," he said, "a great deal of the public engineering work being carried out is absolutely valueless."