INDUSTRIAL WORLD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18198, 19 March 1921, Page 14

INDUSTRIAL WORLD.

NEWS AND NOTES. Bz J. T. Path. BEWARE OF NEW ZEALAND. An extract from a recent Queensland Worker under the above beading conveys the following i The following resolution was carried at the ' Annual Convention:—“That branch secretaries be instructed to place advertisements in the ‘Workers’ and Labour papers warning men not to go to New Zealand, nor sue engagements with New Zealand pastoralists for the forthcoming season, until such time as they are notified that a settlement has been arrived at by the New Zealand branch.” THE WEST AUSTRALIAN ELBOTIONSt The complete figures for the general election are not yet available, but it ia apparent that Wery little change has resulted. The House consists of 50 members, and the> latest figures furnish the following comparison:— Late Now Parliament. Parliament. Country Party .... 15 15 Nationalists It 8 National Labour .... 4, .• Official Labour (Opposition) 16 16 Independent .. .... X 1 The-Government has a very difficult task ahead, especially on account of the financial stringency, the accumulated deficit amounting to £4,789,000, for which it is not wholly responsible. “PENSIONS AT THIRTY.” “Pensions at thirty” as a civil service slogan sounds formidably in the ears of a taxpayer (says a London correspondent), yet this phrase epitomises the programme which was to be submitted by the staff side of a joint committee of the Whitley Councils estalished to investigate the superannuation question. , __ . ■ As explained by Mr'W. J. Brown, Caenoal Officers’ Association, the proposals of the staff, however, have much to commend them.* Their suggestion is that a civil servant should be able to claim at thirty, or any other age, the pension due for past service should /he wish to retire, not be it noted, to l|ve on his wealth, hut in order to enter some other occupation. At present a civil service situation is for life, but if pensions, which are really deferred pay, were drawable at any time, civil servants who happen to be square pegs in round holes might be inspired to seek fresh fields and pastures new. And, vice versa, the authorities might bo disposed occasionally to dismiss an incompetent or misplaced servant. THE COST OF OUT-DOOR RELIEF. In spite of the establishment of relief works and private relief funds, there are heavy additions each week to the list ot those receiving out-relief m all parts of London and Greater London, and London Boards of Guardians have been conferring as a preliminary to calling upon the Government to help the rates by grants from the National Exchequer. ' , , “Local rates cannot boar the burden which is being oast on them,” said-the clerk to the West Ham Board of Guardians., In West Ham we are spending £7OOO a week in outdoor relief. At least £4OOO of this is going to the unemployed. Many applicants are young men eager to work if they could find anything to do.” , The clerk of the Poplar Board of Guardians said it was expected that their estimate of £36,000 as the expenditure on out-relief for the half-year ended March would be exceeded by more than £IO,OOO owing to the growing for out-relief from un : employed. , Taking London and Greater London as a whole, one authority estimated that the expenditure on out-relief for the unemployed is not far short of being at the rate of £1,000.000 a year. “And it looks as though expenditure at this heavy rate may go on for weeks and weeks,” he added. PUBLIC SERVANTS AND ARBITRATION. The Queensland State Lahonrt Government has decided to reimpose a limit on the right of officers of the Public Service to appeal to the Arbitration Court on the matter of salaries and conditions. It will be remembered that previously there was an embargo against officers in receipt of over. £SOO a year going to -the Court, but this was removed. Referring thereto, .Premier Tneodor© says: “An Order in Council will be issued limiting the jurisdiction of the Arbitration 'Court, in so far as the officers of the public service are concerned, to those officers whose salaries are not in excess of £SOO. The numerous applications for increase of calory that have been mad© to the Court on behalf of officers whose salaries are now above £SOO has necessitated this reconsideration of the position. It is obvious that in determining the classification of salaries from £SOO to upwards ’of £IOOO in the Court the consideration of awarding a living wage does not come into the matter. Salaries in such cases are determined with due regard to qualification, entailing professional, administrative, or special experience. Officers occupying such positions should, in the opinion of the court, be under the control of Parliament and not under the Arbitration Court. This decision will apply to all branches, of the Public Service.” THE W.E.A. AND ECONOMICS. The question raised by.the Chief Justice as to the proper attitude of an economics tutor under the Workers’ Association has produced many divided opinions. “No teacher of economics should have imposed on him disabilities that no other : scientific teacher of the college would stand for one moment,” said Prof. J. B. Cond’liffe, who holds the chair of Economics at Canterbury College, speaking at the opening of the Workers’, Educational ■ Association. ■ " Professor Condllffe claimed the right to teach his subject at the college in his own way. Attacks had beenread© an an external teacher of economics, but these were utterly unwarranted, both as regards the facts and the principle. Economists, he insisted, should examine all accepted theories but it could not be held that teachers of economics at the university should simply say that one person said one thing and another person, said another, while he himself re- ' fused to state his own views. “In any case,” he added, “the members of the Workers’ Educational Association classes are men and women, not children, and, usually, they are men and women with pretty strong opinions of their own.” The value of the Workers’ Educational Association work consisted not in what was put into the classes, but in what the students took out of them, and a teacher generally obtained from the classes as much education as the students. THE BRITISH OUTLOOK. Disousing the search for means to remedy the unsatisfactory industrial situation in Britain, Lord Inverforth, Minister for Munitions, says no policy or course of action peculiar to any one section is sufficient, on account of the interconnection and interdependence of industries and services. Furthermore, it is clear that no single step and no single factor of policy, and, above all, no immediate or revolutionary change, can be effective. We--must also recognise the brutal fact that our present standard of life, must inevitably fall from its present level until the disorganised portions of the world are again in a position to produce and interchange goods with us, and enable us to produce and sell not only_ on a quantitative scale at least as great in proportion to our population as in 1913, but on equally efficient terms. Our existing standard of living can only be maintained by a quantitative production per head greatly in excess of that in 1913 and under a state of manhour efficiency at 1c vst equal to that ot 1913. We are now a poor nation, requiring to interchange goods and to compete with nations both richer than ourselvep_ and poorer than ourselves. For example,! if the Uerman steel worker or cool miner is prepared to rebuild the prosperity of his ■ country by working conscientiously for 10 hours a day at a low remuneration, then we are faced in this country with only three alternatives—first, to do the same as the Germans j second, to find some methods of. achieving the same results by greater efficiency of effort; or, lastly, to reduce our population through, emigration. JOTTINGS. ■ Speaking of the ; exploiting of inventors, ,Mr Godfrey Cheesaronn, of the .National Union of Manufacturers,, said recently that the. man who invented the glass balUin the soda-water bottle, unable to sell it for years, gave if * away for £2O to a man! who mode £2,500*000 but of it At a bums meeting of commercial travellers at the Central Hall, Westminster, recently in support > of the new National Union of Commercial Travellers, it was 'stated that the union was framing a scheme for unemployment pay, sick benefit, death benefit, and accident insurance, all embodied in ono paysmn*.