A DISSATISFIED UNION

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6384, 5 December 1907, Page 6

A DISSATISFIED UNION

ARBITRATION COURT'S AWARD.

LABOURERS AND THEIR WAGES.

Dissatisfaction is rife among the nine hundred member:- of Die Wellington Builder.* Labourers' Union, on account of the Arbitration Conn's award in their dispute. The union held a meeting on Tuesday evening U> consider the matter, and passed a motion that the award was very unsatisfactory. Ono or two spcakers*6U' D 'gt.Med that the union should strike, as a protest against the award, but nearly all recognised it was useless kicking over tho traces until the award expired. The union’s principal complaints are as follows: Tho new award allows an employer to start tho men at 7.-15 a.ui., instead of 8 a.m. as formerly, and to give the dinner hour at any time, instead of between 12 o’clock and 12.45* as before. It is pointed out that many labourers have to get their meals at restaurants, but under tho new conditions there is a probability that tho luncheon hour will be given when it will not bo possible to obtain a solid meal. iu tho second place, the Court has reduced the overtime rates from time and a half till y jj.hi. and double time afterwards, to time and a quarter for tho first two hours and timo and a half thereafter. Tho new award abolishes the payment of overtime rates for work dene during tho lunch hour. The men are not at all anxious lor overtime, as mosc of them find an eight-hours’ day 'juitc sufficient, but they point out that when an employer had to pay the rates fixed by the old award, he very often put extra men on -the job during the ordinary working hours, and so provided employment for a greater number. With tho new award this is not likely to occur, Tho old award allowed for boys—tho definition of a “ boy ” being a youth under the age of nineteen years—to be employed in the proportion of one to every four fully-paid labourers. The new award makes the proportion one boy to every five labourers, or fraction of five, and raises tho age limit to twentyone years, bringing many unionists down from the full rates bo 6s per day. The Court has now allowed any man who is willing to work for lees than the ordinary wage to declare that he is incapable, and so undermine the others. The new award makes the minimum rate of wages a half-penny more than under the old award, but the laws of supply and demand had already raised this minimum. 1 Further, the rise is quite inadequate on account of the great increase in the cost of living in the six years since the making of the last award. The men consider the new award to ho far worse than the old one, and say that they are very dissatisfied that, considering the overwhelming amount of evidence they brought, they were practically passed over unnoticed, while everything the employers asked for was conceded- They think that if they had merely posted their demands without appearing in Court they would have done j ust as well.