WORKERS' CONDITIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23137, 8 September 1938, Page 17

WORKERS' CONDITIONS

Sir, —The complaints ventilated in your columns by "Forestry Worker" and "Forestry .'Sufferer" rd conditions of work and remuneration calls for a reply and some sound advice. Their conditions of work, if they only knew it, aro prevalent throughout the land, and not confined to forestry workers as your correspondents would lead others to believe. Moreover, I venture to state that thousands of worker.s in the King Country experience more lost time through the elements in one month than those in Kaingaroa do in a year. Yet these Public Works Department men, earning no bigger wage than forestry workers, aro broadminded enough to realise that for a harassed Government to make up this lost time to over 20,000 workers would, in all probability, increase the yearly pay-out by at least one-third. However, why should forestry workers be paid for work they do not do? Is there any occupation in New Zealand favoured to this extent,? I doubt it. ■«» '

As regards their other childish complaint, that now, since they have bad a rise in wages, they have to pay the cooks, the remedy is in their own hands. Surely they do not want their cake after eating it? Where there is a cookhouse on tho job. all Public Works Department men get together and procure a cook on contract. This relieves them of paying wages and individual bills. Cannot they do the same or do they expect Mr. Langstone himself to advertise tenders, for a cook on their behalf? A Satisfied Worker.