MR SEMPLES CONTRACT

Southland Times, Issue 19256, 21 June 1921, Page 5

MR SEMPLES CONTRACT

LABOUR INCENSED. EX- LEADER AND HIS CRITICS. (Special to the Times.) WELLINGTON, June 20. Mr Robert Semple, an ex-member of Parliament and a well-known Labour leader, and some miners have taken a co-operative contract for a long tunnel connecting with the Wellington water supply, and they have announced their intention of putting the job through in record time without any go slow or strikes. They cannot strike with any satisfaction to themselves, because they are their own employers and since they are cn contract the faster they go the better their earnings. This is an arrangement that is regarded with disfavour by their comrades in the Labour movement. Mr Semple is accused of violation of the principles of unionism, of speeding up, and of other offences against organised Labour. He took the platform in Wellington last night for the purpose of saying some pointed things to his critics, whom he described, in the language he usually reserves for capitalists, as poisonous industrial toads. He and his mates, he claimed, were pioneering the way to a solution of many of New Zealand’s industrial troubles. They had eliminated the exploiting employer and were giving their best work at their best speed for a good wage. Workers must have some sort of social conscience.

Mr Semple evidently did not satisfy his critics, who interrupted freely, but he certainly was interesting.