COMMISSION SYSTEM EVIL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19130, 26 September 1936, Page 5

COMMISSION SYSTEM EVIL

TAXI DRIVER CRITICAL SPEEDING TO GET FARES OPINIONS AT INQUIRY (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. A complaint was made, to the committee of inquiry into the taxi and carrying business yesterday by Mr. Percy Withers, proprietor of the Kilbirnie Kab Kompany, that Government officers arriving by boat arranged with the Post and Telegraph Department cars to meet and convey them home. A sort of private hire arrangement went on between the departments. Later Mr. Withers said the drivers smashed up cars faster than they could be repaired. The good driver had been driven out of the game. Mr. Richard Knipe, commission driver for Grey Cabs, said he had been driving for six to seven years as a night-shift, day-shift, and single-shift driver, and on the lot had never earned more than £3 a week, unless there was a good week, and then a bad-week'would counteract' that. In his opinion, the man who got the big takings was the man who speeded to get them. The careful driver would not take as. much money. This was the evil of the commission system. It was an unsatisfactory way of paying a man's wages for him to have to speed to get more fares in the day. LIVED ON THE JOB He worked an average of an eight-hour day. Once he used to stay up all night to wait for the express steamer. Up practically lived on the job then. He had not done so since working for his present employer. Since the Black and White organisation started the business had been a "cutthroat" one, and no one made any money. Accidents had occurred from the direct cause of long hours with lack of sleep. From this cause, he had not had one escape from accident but hundreds. On'long jobs, he had had to get out of one car he drove and open the windows and so on to keep himself awake. Under the present fares, there were too many taxis.

Mr. James Lewis Fenton, the proprietor of White Band Taxis, said there were not too many taxis in. Wellington. Sometimes there were not enough, but there were at certain times too many on the road. What was killing! the taxi business was the paying off of sums for new cars. i

The committee adjourned and will meet at Christchurch on Tuesday.