SEAMEN AND FIREMEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18754, 6 January 1923, Page 12

SEAMEN AND FIREMEN

THE OUT-OF-WORKS. AUCKLAND MEN’S PREDICAMENT. (From Oue Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND, January 5. The holiday season has been anything btit a happy time for the seamen and firemen who are on strike in Auckland. Day after day they have wandered up and down Queen street in the sunshine and_ in the rain, and many of them show plainly the effects of the strain which eight weeks'' idleness, with very limited resources, has imposed upon them. There has been a weekly strike payment of £2 10s to married men and £1 5s to single men, but that has not gone far, particularly at a time when it is usual to have a well-stocked larder. Wives and children have felt the pinch, and in many Households ihe struggle to keep going has been most severe. Family men have been at their wits’ end to find money with which to carry on. “I have had to pawn nearly everything in the house,” said one man, “and I am not the only one.” Strike pay has now, it is reported, been reduced to £1 10s for married men and £1 for single men, so that the plight of .the strikers will be even more serious. There can bo little doubt that, they are tired of the business, and perhaps somewhat disheartened, but there arc still some among them who deny that it is a strike at all. About 50 of the seamen and firemen who are out of work are staying at the Sailors’ Home. Accommodation is arranged for others by the union, and it is said that no men have hud to resort to sleeping out. Very few of the strikers seem to have taken up temporary work, apparently holding the view that they would _ only be putting someone else out of his job. The reported reduction in strike pay may cause them to alter their outlook, for they will have to do something to supplement their allowance, and that very soon. What they receive from the union is barely sufficient to pay for board and lodging.