SERVANTS' TRADE UNION.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 13138, 26 July 1913, Page 9

SERVANTS' TRADE UNION.

DEMAND FOR TWO MAIDS FOR EVERY MISTRESS. NEW YORK, May 10. American housewives are threatened wjith something worse than stamp-lick--, ing in : the shape of a domestee workers*/ trade union, organised with'headquarters att Boston and Chicago, with the firm determination to secure tlhe rights of all servants and enforce the follow- v ing demands :— ■■•'■'■.'• •■'■ A ten-hour day; one week off; '» week's holiday for. all servant! who have been employed for mor» than six months. The use of the lift; lighter j stairways; a kitchen entrance or the privilege to us« the front entrance.. The union is devoting particular atV tention to the hard lot of ladies' maids, who complain that they are frequently forced to give their mistresses massage at fouT o'clock in the morning on .their return from ! a ball. It insists that mistresses who require, such services must keep ' two ladies' maids or allow their maid- time to sleep and rest after 8 a.m. . -...;. .■'■ . '. v . ■• ' "How do you propose to stretch a tenhour day so as to cover breakfast and | dinner in households wnere only on« servant is kept?" I asked Mrs Raymond Robins, the president of the new union. "It conot be so stretched," was the very decided reply. '"Mistresses in future must choose which meal they will prepare themselves— breakfast or dinner. 1 I suspect that they will choose break-, fast." Mrs Robins added that one of the chief objects of the Union will be to "standardise" housework in the infceri est of both the housewife and the maids.