THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22023, 4 August 1933, Page 3

THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

NEWS AND NOTES

By J. T. Paul.

The world now is in labour with two main ideas that press upon it. First, is the appreciation of the need for unification, for getting into a world-wide management of each community’s interests —to a world commonwealth. The second is a realisation of the need for discipline, because of that dissolution of the old traditional ideas of conduct which have hitherto bound communities together.—Mr 11. G. Wells.

TO PROVIDE EMPLOYMENT.

A scheme by which mutual benefit would accrue to workmen and wages tax contributors was placed before the Christchurch Citizens’ Unemployment Relief Committee this week. The proposal has been sponsored by the Canterbury Master Painters’ Association and the New Zealand Federation. Members of the committee will consider the suggestion with a view to discussing it at the next meeting. A copy of the proposal signed by Mr G. F. Mazey, president of the Master Painters’ Association, stated that it was claimed that many unemployed tradesmen could be engaged on constructive repair or renovation jobs on dwellings and business premises. The suggestion was that persons paying the weekly emergency tax on wages or salaries should be privileged to spend 95 per cent, yearly on work that would benefit themselves as well as the men given employment. It was proposed that the Government should issue a coupon to each person paying the wages tax of the sum which would normally go to the general unemployment fund, less 5 per cent. The amount represented by the coupon, which would be 95 per cent, of the sum required from the taxpayer by law, would be paid to the contributor at any post office on presentation of a wages voucher for the wages paid. Mr J. W. Beanland said the gist of the scheme was that the citizens should be taxed and the proceeds of the tax used on work. The scheme looked all right, but Whether it would work when they got down to it was the question. One drawback was that people with big incomes could get a tremendous amount of work done.

Mr F, W. J. Belton declared that the weakness of the proposal was that it would perpetuate the tax.

WORK AND COUNTRY LIFE.

It is unquestionably true (writes_ Mr W. S. Morison in the English Review) that country life seems to give more satisfaction to the workers than does town life to the millions of factory hands, not to speak of the unemployed. The reason seems to Jie in the greater degree to which the countryman possesses the priceless attribute of status. The village carpenter is a working man like his brother in the furniture factory. Of the two, the countryman probably makes less money. But, judging from political manifestations. he seems the more contented of the two. After making due allowance for the better health of the countryman, hie freedom from noise and other superior amenities, there remains some further attraction about his life which must be explained if we are to account for his greater degree of cheerfulness. BAKERS’ DRIVERS’ DISPUTE. The assessors who composed the Conciliation Council which considered the dispute between the master bakers and drivers in Christchurch failed this week to arrive at an agreement. _ During the course of the hearing various alternatives were suggested, the original demands being £4 by the employees, tne employers offering £3 15s. “The position has been discussed fully by the firms concerned and by the assessors, ' but we are dubious about -making any advance on our original olfer, particularly in consideration of the state of the bakery trade to-day,” said Mr Macdonald. “ The employers have to be very careful, but I would remind Mr Parlaue that they have not taken any advantage against the men of the conditions existing since the award went out. The wages offer of £3 15s cannot be advanced if the employers are to be tied to an award as set out in our counter-proposals. “ However, there is an alternative. We submit the following five clauses to be made into an award: — “1. The hours shall be 48 a week. “ 2 Overtime beyond the 48 hours shall be paid for at the rate of time and a-quarter. “3. The wages shall be £4 a week. “ 4. Provision to be included for the employment of youths at the rates set out in our original counter-proposals. (These rates were: 16-17 years, £1; 1718 £1 ss; 18-19, £1 15s; 19-20, £2 ss; 2021, £2 155.) “5. The union to be granted a preference clause in terms of one previously agreed upon in conciliation but somehow overlooked by the Arbitration Court. “ The offer is that there shall be these five clauses and no others in the award and the offer of a wage of £4 a week is entirely conditional on the adoption of the other four clauses. Mr Parlane: What about the proportion of youths employed? _ . Mr Macdonald: No provision is made for that. ~ . ~ . aReturning after considering this otter, Mr Parlane said that „ the employees could not accept the £4 on the conditions stipulated. He could not see why the employers desired to do away with the conditions agreed on in the industry for many years. There must be a nigger m the woodpile somewhere. Mr Macdonald: The only nigger in the woodpile is that the employers are prepared to give £4 a week on these terms. The position was clear enough, said Mr Macdonald. The choice was between £4 a week on one set of conditions, and £3 15s a on the others. ■ Mr i/'arlane: W 7 e cannot accept either After further discussion Mr Macdonald said the employers would make one further concession. They would put in another clause providing for time and aquarter for work done on statutory holidays. “ W 7 e don’t want any further adjournments,” said Mr Macdonald. “However, if there is any hope of anything being done, we will leave our offer open for a week.”

Returning after lunch the general discussion was continued. The employees put forward new counter-proposals, hut the employers hold to their offer. “We can say quite definitely,” said Mr Macdonald in conclusion, “ that the employers will not consider increasing their offer. The employees can accept it if they like or refuse it if they like.” The council then adjourned sine die. Mr Ritchie saying that if the employees changed their minds they could accept the employers’ offer until August 10.

TRADE UNION CONTROL. On May 5 the Hitler Government issued several ordinances dealing with the future structure of the German trade union movement. The first ordinance stated that Mr Walter Schuhmann, a Nazi member of the Reichstag, was to assume as from that date the entire management of the German Federation of Trade Unions, the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions in Germany, the Trade Union Ring of German Employees, Workers and Civil Servants’ Organisations, as well as the smaller trade union organisations. The second appointed Messrs Paul Brinkmann and Karl Muller to take control of the cash and financial resources of the organisatms. while a third ordinance appointed r Reginald Muchow to deal with questions of organisation concerning the unions.

The management of the trade union press has been handed over to the control of Mr Hans Biallas. manager of the Committee of Action for the Protection of German Labour. Following the formation of a " German Labour Front,” a Labour Senate was set up under the leadership of Mr Robert Ley, leader of the Committee for Action for the Protection of German Labour. The total membership of the Labour Senate is 60. The first meeting of the Labour Senate was held on May 10. The Senate will control the entire trade union movement throughout Germany, and will hold conferences from time to time. It will also undertake the management of Consumers’ Co-operative Societies.

MACHINE AND MAN. The Marion shovel No. 5560 weighs 1100 tons. The boom is the length of a city lot, 05 feet. The dipper handle is 63ft Sin over all. The capacity of the dipper itself is 18 cubic yards, or 27 tons. This colossal machine, built at Marion, Ohio (U.S.A.), for use in Kansas stripping operations, would easily pick up a 40-passenger bus from the street and put it down on top of a building 70 feet high. This huge mechanism towers 80 feet above the ground. In 45 seconds it will scoop up 27 tons of earth, hoist high enough to clear the bank, swing around to the dumping point, dump, swing back, and lower to the digging point. In three minutes it will fill a gondola with all it can carry.

This shovel is used to mine thin veins of coal lying under dirt, rock, and shale up to 70 feet in thickness. From 12 to 15 carloads of dirt are removed for each carload of coal mined.

INTERNATIONALS LEAVE GERMANY. Owing to the oppressive tactics of Herr Hitler, the leader of the National Socialists, against trade union organisations and the workers generally, in Germany, the International Federation of Trade Unions has been compelled to remove its headquarters from Berlin to Paris. The new address of the federation is 9 Avenue d’Orsay, Paris, 7. The headquarters of the following International Workers’ Federations have been transferred to Amsterdam;—The International Federation of Bui'ding Operatives, the International Union of Woodworkers, the International Painters’ Secretariat, the International Federation of Glass Workers. A similar decision has also been taken by the International Boot and Shoe Operatives and Leather Workers’ Federation, whose headquarters have been transferred from Nuremberg to London.

CHILD LABOUR IN UNITED STATES. As the result of a conference between the commissioners of labour and the tobacco growers in Massachusetts and Connecticut an agreement has been signed by which tobacco growers, representing 95 per cent, of the industry in the two States, have agreed not to employ children under 14 years on their plantations.

For many years those interested in child labour have protested against the exploitation of children in tobacco fields, where they work long hours under conditions of hardship for small wages. General acceptance of a 14-year minimum age by the large growers will bring about an improvement of conditions without placing employers at a disadvantage. The majority of the press in New England has hailed the agreement as a real achievement, marking the end of child labour in the tobacco fields. CAUSE OF DEPRESSIONS. “ Perhaps the high, dizzy peaks of booms and the deep, dark valleys of depression are but a reflection of a peculiar cycle of mass psychology,” says Mr Walter W. Price in “We Have Recovered Before.” “ But if we wish to* ascertain the immediate cause of depressions, we have not far to seek —the cause is the fantastic extremes lo which the preceding boom has inflated financial values and unbalanced reasoning powers. The causes of these swings from periods of extreme prostration to periods of excessive prosperity, recurrent as they have been with striking regularity, can never be determined with any degree of accuracy. They always reflect) a certain psychological direction in the changing temper of the mind and attitude of men. Walter Bagehot said that ‘ Human experience infers that, when the blind capital of a country is particularly large and craving, it seeks for someone to devour it, and it is plethora. It finds someone, and it is speculation. It is devoured, and it is panic. But this one thing is clearly demonstrated, not. only in the history of the people of Britain, but in the history of the people of all other countries that, from whatever cause or causes depressions arise, they have always proved but temporary. And, notwithstanding the tjjjigic experiences which they record, there' has come, after each successive trough of economic collapse, a return to levels of prosperity not previously attained.”