THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21544, 16 January 1932, Page 18

THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

By J T. Paul,

NEWS AND NOTES

If the real man-in-the-strcct happened to find himself present in this select congregation, I should be prepared to argue with him that the God we (Jhristions believe in is very closely concerned with our economic systems,_ our trade, our currency, our political aims and methods, our armaments, and our relationships with other nations. —Bishop of Croydon, in a sermon preached at Oxford. INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CONFERENCE. It has been decided to bold a special maritime session of the International Labour Conference in 1933, not separated by any interval from the general session of that year. The holding of a preparatory technical conference is left in abeyance. The following subjects have been provisionally selected for consideration by the general session of 1933: (1) The systems of providing for rest and organising shifts in automatic glassworks; (2) unemployment insurance; (3) holidays with pay; (4) underground work of women and young persons. The final choice will be made this month. If the 1932 session so decides, the 1933 session will also have to consider, on second discussion, the subjects of old age, invalidity and widows’ and orphans’ insurance, and the abolition of fee-charging employment agencies.

WORKERS AND JOBS. We have not had many opportunities lately at our place for the discussion of current problems, because we have all had plenty of work to do and there has been no chance to get together. But a chap who was in giving us a hand let loose at smoke-oh for a few minutes and gave us all something to think about (writes a correspondent of the Christchurch Press). His theme was an old one. He had worked in the city, he told us, and got sick of it. If a man worked on a farm he might expect to end his days on it, but a city boss just put him off when he was too old.

This was not a man with a grievance or a bee in his bonnet. He had simply taken to the country because ,he thought it was kinder than the town and he explained that he was not a wanderer. He had, as he said, picked up with a boss he liked and had stayed with him, and though he was temporarily taking on another job he could always go back and be welcome. It was because his boss was having a hard time that he thought he would take a spell somewhere else until times improved. “I’ve been on the same farm for 24 years,” he said, “ and can stay there another 24 if I like. But my first job in the town lasted six months and my second 14 months, and then I had 10 years with one firm, only to be put off at a week’s notice when things got a bit elack. Then I had three years or so with another firm and got put off again. “ I've seen men who worked 30 years with the same people put off through no fault of their own, simply because they were getting old and a bit slow. When a firm puts in a new machine it aside so much each year for depreciation, and when the machine is worn out it can be scrapped without costing anything and the money is there to buy another machine to replace it. But it isn’t that way with men. “ Town firms look after everything but their hands,” he went on. “A good business has a depreciation reserve for stock and another for plant, and another reserve so that it can go on paying dividends in bad times, but it doesn’t nave a wages reserve so that it can go on paying wages in bad times. Some firms have superannuation funds, which are all to the good,' but not funds for the protection of both jobs and wages. _ “ When I’m finished here, if I can t get another job I’ll go back to my old boss and potter about for a few bob and my keep and be happy. You couldn tdo that in a boot factory or a town store. Give me the country every time. it treats you kinder,” . This is not altogether a new view, of course, but I’m afraid we don’t give such subjects, the thought we ought to give them, and I pass on the story tor my town friends to think about.

WASTE AND WORRY. “ When I hear a person say of an unemployed man, ‘ He should work fot his living,’ I wonder if he realises the brutality of his language, * writes Sir Ben Turner in the Daily Herald. “ Many a man goes to waste because no one will employ him. Then comes the overwhelming worry. “ Why should a man have to worry over lack of work? Few men are born idle. The cause is our disorganised system of living. “There is, of course, waste and worry at the top end as well as at the bottom end of the scale, but that is self-made, too. “When this friend of mine reads to me about a man driven by hunger and poverty to suicide, and then reads me a long account of a fashionable wedding costing as much as a woman weaver in a cloth mill gets for 10 years’ hard work, she gets angry, and points out the worry afflicting the man who took his life and the waste of the woman spending such immense sums on a wedding. “•I just whisper: ‘lt’s a pity for the one, and the other ought to have been brought up better.’” , LABOUR AND THE BANKS. “I was severely taken to task,” writes Mr J. A. Spender in the News-Chroniclo, “by several Labour correspondents for having said that Labour proposed that Government should control the Bank of England and the other joint stock banks. I was told that I had seriously misrepresented the Labour Party, which proposed that not the Government, but a ‘public corporation containing representatives of the Treasury, the Board of Trade, industry, labour, and the co-operntive movement’ should exerciee i this control. (Vide Labour and the Nation.) “ I will not, for the moment, argue whether'such a corporation would in effect be Government control, but it will save me the trouble of answering many letters if I point out that the language which I used was exactly that used by Sir Stafford Cripps, who, presumably, was speaking the authentic word for Labour, in tha House of Commons, “He said: ‘The Government must be able to control and direct the flow of credit, and it must take responsibility' for that action. The only way in which they could take that action was by controlling the Bank of England. The Government must have the power to direct the flow of short term and intermediate term credits, and it could only do so by control of the direction of the joint stock banks,’ etc. .... “ There is really no mistake about it, and I hope now I shall be permitted to use the same language about Labour policy as is used by Sir Stafford Cripps.”

HOURS OF WORK. One result of the persistent economic depression has been u growth of interest in the subject of hours of work. In the countries most severely stricken by unemployment many employers have voluntarily reduced working hours in order to be able to occupy a larger number of workpeople. The possibilities offered by such a step as a means of easing the present situation are attracting attention in almost all directions, and public authorities are considering whether it is not for them to take action, in some cases for a “ redistribution of work ” by the means indicated above as an emergency measure to cope with the present crisis, and in other cases for a permanent shortening of the working day or week. So far four Goverinments—those of Germany, the tree city of Danzig, Poland, and Czechoslovakia —have taken such action. It may be timely to recapitulate here the measures they have adopted.

In Germany, a legislative decree of June 5, 3931, empowered the Federal Government, subject to the consent of the Federal Council, to issue orders for the reduction of hours of work to 4)0 per week for certain branches of industries, public administrative services, or classes of workers. In the exercise of this power, the Federal Government issued on September 30 last a series of orders containing practical provisions relating either to normal working hours or to supplementary hours.

In Danzig, the Government of the free city has issued an emergency order for the introduction of the 40-hour week in State and municipal departments and in other public services. In Poland, a Bill was adopted by the Diet on October 10, and by the Senate two days later, which has the effect of amending the Eight Hour Day Act of 1919 and which had previously received .the approval of the Government. The Act of 1919 contains a section by which, in case of “ national necessity,” the Government is authorised —after consultation with the employers’ and workers’ organisations —to promulgate orders permitting an extension of the working day or week. The Bill just passed by the Diet _ and the Senate makes provision for the issue in case of “national or economic necessity,” of orders not only for the prolongation but also for the diminution of hours of work. Thus, the speedy procedure created to enable the normal working day to be extended beyond eight hours, in certain exceptional circumstances, will be made available also for the fixing of the normal working day at something under eight hours. In Czechoslovakia, the Minister of Social Welfare has prepared the draft of a Bill for the 40-hour week, and it, has been submitted to the other Government departments for consideration. By the provisions of this draft, hours of work in industrial undertakings may not as » rule exceed eight per day and 40 per week (instead of. 48, as at present). The Bill would apply also to undertakings in agriculture and forestry, unless a decision to the contrary were taken by the Minister of Social Welfare in agreement with the Minister of Agriculture. In mining establishments (mines, coke ovens, roasting furnaces and blast furnaces), hours of work would be limited to seven and a-half per day and 36 per week. A special distribution of working hours would be permitted for certain groups of undertakings, including transport and agriculture, provided that the total number of hours worked should not exceed 120 in any period of three weeks. Further, the weekly rest period for all industries would be increased from 32 hours to 36. The minimum age for the admission of lads to night work would be raised from 16 to 18 years (night work is forbidden for females of whatever age). The Bill would also fix at 18 years the age below which young persons of either sex may not be employed except in light occupations such as cannot be injurious to their health or their physical development. In short, the measure comprises a whole series of provisions tending towards a general reduction of hours of work with a view to an enlargement of the scope for employment.