COOKS AND WAITERS AND EMPLOYERS.

NZ Truth, Issue 78, 15 December 1906, Page 1

COOKS AND WAITERS AND EMPLOYERS.

Trie extraordinary blundering by which the "proposals" of the Cooks' and Waiters' Union actually became the "award," unopposed, \has created the o-reatest consternation among the large class of private hotel and boarding-house keepers, and those of. such hotels who charge a reasonable tariff' and don't make you pay for plate glass ,and stuffed Jeam'es. It is well' Inown that owing; to high rents and dear food-stuffs, many of! these people are only living ; from hand to mouth, and to suddenly ] saddle, them with increased wages ' and thj; necessity lor employing i double staffs and Working shifts, is : 'something that even the sincere , svmpa^hiser with labor cannot note | with exultation. To nut a -typical ; case. , ,A. rxms a private hotel and : employs one female cook. As she will not, under the. award, be allowed t 0 work moire 'than nine hours a day, and must fset one half day a week off, and ever" fourth Sunday. it will be absoluteW necessar- for A. to hire another book 'to talce the work, on those able to .serve his boarders with a ii^reakfiitabeiorefi' o r & dinner after,, 6/i>3n, if hip. ilpes^not , empldy ar secon^ dbok. f'How; h€ will be able* to' casual pookas to take broken time will be a Chinese puzzle, while the effect of such circumscribed feeding hours on the boarders who have to be at work at 8 and those who don't leave off till, 6, will be simply dislocatinc to business. Then, hay- j ing a seophd cook under her, the original Queen of the kitchen will be entitled to and must receive a chief cook's wasres, while the lieutenant must get the wage the original cook drew when, being albne, f she only classed as second. That alone is a pretty stiff . proposition for a struggling landlord; to face ; but added to it he has to solve, the question of waitresses, where the same difficulty arises, with the difference that it is ivvti greater by reason of the ereater aumber 'to tie doubled and worked m shifts or else worked m one shift, batween impossible hours. It must be distinctly . understood m ihis- connection that it is premised that • all Wellington waitresses do work m shifts— and. of course other things— But this is not a. matter of the uniform that m«st, under this "award," be provided by the proprietor of the hashery, it is a mere side issue dragged m to show the absolute purity of intention that characterises this article. It means, if this award-by-de-fault stands good and cannot foe legally assailed until the lapse of two years, that lots of hard-working privale and small hotelkeepers will be out of a job and -thrown on the employment market themselves to compete m an already crowded business. It is a bad muddle, whichever way it is looked at; for there is no use denying the fact that hotel-servants have already been long at a disadvantage m the matter of long hours, Domparcd with their more favored brothers and sisters of the shop and factory. . But it is just as undeniable that the business is one which it is absolutely impossible to reason on from the same standpoint. It is a mode of earning a living that stands ■ alone and those who have adopted it bave done so with open eyes. The cooks and waiters are not only well paid m this country, but they have . almost invariably board and lodging thrown m, so that they do not have, as m the case of the shopman or girl, to live on their salary. With women, especially, this is a tremendous consideration and fully balances the drawback of longer hours which circumstances render unavoidable. A, waitress on 17s 6d 6r £1 per week usually has decent quarters and an excellent table, and m this she is infinitely better oft than the shop-girl on 30s a week— and very few get that much. She; has all her mon.y clear for dress and amusement and it is a very herd place where a waitress or

cook cannot get off almost any evening after, say, 7.30, s o as to "be able to attend the theatre pc anything that will pass the time and relieve i the mind by chfn^e. It is these priI vileges that induce young women to i enter the business m preference to' i mare "genteel." employment, and most of them recognise that "gentility" is dearly bought when it takes almost .every penny of the "genteel" salary to r-ay for board and lodging m a "genteel" quarter. Experience goes to show that the New Zealand waitress is about asself-relir-nt, independent young person as any alive and that she has double the opportunities for receiving attentions, being taken out and j "stood Sam" for and even for getting comf ortably married that her sisters of the shop and the factory have. And female cooks are even better placed, if a bit harder worked. They ! are paid handsomely and are practi-. cally their own boss ; m fact a good [ cook is an autocrat before whom even the: sourest, landlady is respectful and; m whose presence the most (•timidity.. ' Here, ;fchsv, are' sound reasons why people in} this line of business.should expecV^b^submit .to-work-ing' longer tioiirs than shop-folk. The emancipation of .labor is a most admirable and desirable tiling ; but there are limits, and when the Cooks' and Waiters' Union put m its "proposals," it made them pretty wide m the full expectation of a contest and getting a happy mean. The Union could not forsee that the employers would, by some stupid blunder, fail to safeguard their interests as they did and as a matter, of fact the cooks and waiters, now they have got all ; they asked for, are rather alarm :J at the possible results of such sweeping concessions. One thing that .should "give pause" to the waiters is that if the "award"' holds good there won't be any waiters m Wellington in' three months ; because hotel and res-taurant-keepers are certain to supplant them by cheaper waitresses and they can bet their, corned feet that this is a straight tip. This paper has allowed this class a great deal of space to voice their proper complaints, for more than half a year past, and has supported their claims editorially. But there are limits, and the limit m this case has been overstepped. Unless the cost of living, to the board and lodger, of which class are some two-thirds of the po- 1 pulation of Wellington, is not to be strained to breaking point, then the Arbitration Court or some other court will have to permit the employers to intervene, and to accept their belated reference to the Arbitration Court.