INDUSTRIAL WORLD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17092, 25 August 1917, Page 12

INDUSTRIAL WORLD.

NEWS AND NOTES. Br THE Hon. J. T. Paul, M.L.O. THE EFFICIENCY BOARD. r^lQ resignation of tho National Efficiency J3oard has oreated some interest in industrial ciroles. Its work was likolv to have a very practical interest for" tlio workers, sinco it promised to alter some of their industrial conditions. The board never had tile conlkl-enco of organised Labour becauso of its i>artialiy representative character. It should have been representative of every interest in Mio community. As it was, organised Labour was left out of the composition of the board. In practice that might easily havo meant that when some far-reaching' proposal of the board was being put in operation failure was certain because of a lack of confidence on the part of Labour. It must be admitted that tho work of t.ho hoard was very thorough, but the private opinions of its members were in more than one instance plainly apparent. Whether the resignation will be accepted, or whether the' board will bo given new powers is at present a matter tor consideration by the Government, but it will probably bo wise for the Labour organisations to keep a wideopen cyo on the developments. AMERICAN LABOUR AND THE WAR. The current number of the American Federationist, official organ of the Federation of Labour, publishes an article on '"I ho 'Drive' on Labour Standards," by Samuel Gompers. Mr Gompers has come out boldly as a supporter of America's participation in the war. In the article mentioned Mr Gompers points out that with the declaration of war came a determined, persistent movement to break down standards of labour the whole country. To such a step he is opposed. It will be remembered that tho cables informed us recently that organised Labour in _ Amer : ca had adopted a poliry of no strikes during the war. The Committee on Labour of tho Council of National Defence arrived at a decision, but. according to Mr Gompers, "the metropol'tan press, with one accord, misinterpreted the thought and purpose of the resolution by sensational headlines and editorial \commcnt to the effect that_ the workers ' would forgo all strikes during tho period of the war, and would agree to conditions rather than interrupt production. This statement was in direct conflict with tho facts. No representative of organised labour ha 9 been authorised to make such a declaration, and no one has made such a declaration. The right to stop working—to strike—has been established by years of struggle and sacri-

fico. It is the inalienablo right which free workers refuse to surrender to others." The Council of National Defence has advised that neither employers nor employees should take advantage of the country's necessities to change existing standards, and that the Legislatures should, endeavour to maintain pre-war conditions. Perfect co-operation with the legislatures has been found • impossible, and some conflicts have arisen with employers. President Wilson has himself thus to the Committee on Labour:— "I have been very much alarmed at one or two things that have happened: At the apparent inclinat'on of the legislature of one or two of our States to set aside even temporarily the laws wh : ch have safeguarded the standards of labour and of life. I th'nk nothinc would be more deplorable than that. We are trv-ncr to fieht in a cause which means tho lifting of the standards of life." LABOUR UNREST TN- BRITAIN. From time to time the cables tell us of strikes more or less serious in the Mother- > land. At tho moment the railway enginedrivers and firemen are dircctly involved in a threatened strike, with the possibility of other branches of railSvaymen joining in the revolt. The causes of industrial strife at Home are many and varied, and much too lengthy to be set out here. Close observers of matters industrial in the Old Land weU know that a state of serious unrest obtains. _ Almost continuously since tho introduction of tho Munitions Act and tho policy of dilution of labour sections of workers have been in revolt. And at the same time every fair-minded person must agree that the masses of the British people havo been loyal to the nation. Tho New Statesman nuts it this way in an. article on "The Temper of the Workshop": — "The patience of the workmen appears to bo hear the breaking point. The extraordinary -unanimity and constancy With which the British manual workers in all industries have supported the policy of the nation; the patience with which, taken as a /whole, the wage-earners have endured the shameless 'profiteering' which they 6ee as one of tne causes of tho rises in prices, and the exemplary forbearance that they have shown in face of the repeated breaches of faith from which they have suffered, must not encourage us to believe that they will stand anything." The article then goes on to deal more particularly with the grievances and the why' the workers are dissatisfied:— They are'annoyed by .the repeated failure of the Government to secure the enforcement on* recalcitrant employers of what the workmen believe to be tho substance of the agreements made by tho Government with the trade union executives. They resent the months of delay that still constantly occur between tho formulation' of a complaint of i!l-trcatment or breach of faith by an employer, and the tardy decision that is eventually extracted from tho tribunals to which the Government has subjected them.. And they are moro and more realising that thero is probably gofng to bo,' after the war, what they will" ■ for a wholo generation, describe as tho Great Betrayal. The ' trade union conditions which, at the request of the Government and the employers, tho workmen agreed to giv§ up for the period of the war, upon the most solemn pledges, joined in by statemen of all parties and expressly ratified

by a unanimous Houso of Commons, that they wore to be„ reinstated after the wur, when tho. 'pre-warpractice of the workshop was to bo resumed, are—so the workmen aro now coming to believe—never going to be restored. The pre-war practices aro not going to be resumed. ' The complete reorganisation of the engineering and other factories doing private work for which the Government is now pressing under the name of ' dilution '—the breaking up of the rkillod man's job into fragments that can •rbe, brought within the compass of a labourer cv a woman, tho introduction of semi-auto-matic machines, the replacing of standard time wages by piece work rates unsafpguardod by collective bargaining, and the substitution of women and semi-skilled men for tho trained mechanic—cannot, so the ■ workmen \ believe, bo elected only 'for the period of the war.'. Once the change is made, it does not seem likely that it can over be undone." ' • . THE LIVING WAGE. In recent years the inoreased cost of living as illustrated by tho Government statisticians -has had a very direct' bearing on the wages awarded by the Australian and we-w Zealand Arbitration Courts. It is now recognised in Australia that they are not sufficiently complete. In giving a decision in the Commonwealth Arbitration Court the other day,..Mr 'Justice Powers declared that, • without questioning the value of the Commonwealth Statistician's figures for the purpose for which they were obtained, he found them unsatisfactory as the only basis for fixing a living wage. His reasons for this statement were that; the. method in which the average consumption was arrived at-did not indicate the average working man's consumption of the particular articles; also the figures took no account of such* important items as clothing. It had to bb assumed that clothing had increased in prices in the same ratio as food, groceries; and rent, whereas it was probably true that it had increased to a greater extent than the averago of those three classes. He had previously recommended the appointment of a commission to inquire into the question of a Federal living wage, and ;Mr Justice Higgles had suggest a" similar inquiry. He again strongly supported this suggestion. The result of an inquiry, such as suggested, would give all courts a com■mon basis in which uniform awards would be possible The divergent views expressed by Commonwealth and State courts were .not in the,.public interest, or in the interest of industrial peacc. 4 JOTTINGS. Mr A. "Walker, M.P. for Dunedin North, has introdrced an amendment to the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act providing that gardeners employed otherwiso than for tho pecuniary gain of their employers fball bo bound by awards and industrial agreements. As tha law now stands gardeners omployed by private employers are exompfc from awards. Tacklo coughs and colds bv using NAZOL. That's the sensible and oheapest way. NAZOL is. penetrating, germ-killine;, and most economical. 60 doses Is 6d>