PIECEWORK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18856, 8 May 1923, Page 8

PIECEWORK

“ONLY SOLUTION.” MR J. B. NICHOLSON’S VIEWS. . *‘l suggest that unless an efficient worker is better raid than the inefficient, we shall go backwards instead of forward. Labour might well make such a concession in return for a suitable amount of preferential treatment, and I hope to see some move in this direction shortly.” Those pregnant sentences are from the speech of Mr J. B. Nicholson, chairman of the directorate of the English Electric Company of Australia (Ltd.), at the annual meeting of shareholders in that organisation.

Mr Nicholson declared that the success of the company in future as a manufacturing concern depended upon two things—first, a preference by Government and other public bodies in favour of machinery of Australian manufacture; second, the* introduction of piece-work in sotne shape or other.

“Giving a preference, as our Gity Council has done, to Empire production,’’ he asserted, “is of no help to struggling industries here which are faced with the competition of female arid unskilled labour in the Home lands, while they have to pay Wages Beard rates out here. What we require is a preference fo- Australian-made articles.”

The above extract from a Sydney paper has been forwarded to a member of our staff by a shrewd and observant ex-Dun-edinite who now resides in Sydney. In commenting on it he says;— Of course, all the union bosses are up in arms at this; but it is gospel truth. I do not know where the average Aussie’s brains are, he never seems to use them. But Labour extremists seem to run all the shews over here. They have a “Navigation Act” which' is- simply killing, slowly, Australian shipping. It was shown the other day, in black and white, that a commonwealth passenger Home steamer cost over £60,C00 a year more to run than a British bioat of equal size. These costs are owing to the Navigation Act. The public pays big fares on the coast and gets very poor attention. , , '