Labour Day

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 805, 28 October 1929, Page 13

Labour Day

; WORKERS OF DOMINION CELEBRATE EIGHT-HOUR | WORKING DAY HISTORY OF MOVEMENT Written for The Sun. Few trade unionists or politicians of the Labour movement, which today celebrates its annual “feast day,” as it were, have any but the remotest idea of how the day of celebration came to be fixed for October 28, and later for the Monday nearest this date. October 2S, many years ago, saw the foundation of the Maritime Council, organised by Mr. J. A. Miller, secretary of the Dunedin Seamen's Union, and later a Cabinet Minister holding the portfolio of Marine. Prior to the founding of the Maritime Council, the Eight-Hours Day Demonstration Committee held its annual propaganda fixture oil January 29, that being a statutory holiday. The same dignity was later conferred on October 28, which was first called Eight-Hours Day, since changed to Labour Day, the old name not harmonising with the facts that in some trades the “day” is less than eight hours, nor with the aspirations of the Dominion-minded Labourites. The term “Eight-Hours Day” is still in use in Australia. EARLY SATURDAY

The first attempt at organising a formal movement for the limiting of the working day in New Zealand was by a Chartist deported from England, who came to New Zealand after being released from imprisonment in Australia for his political beliefs. As far hack as ISSI the workers in the building trades in Auckland joined to secure the then much-opposed concession, of finishing the week’s work at 4 p.m. on Saturday. This may raise a smile among those who now “knock off” at noon after a 44-hour week, but it marked the beginning of organised labour’s efforts at restricting the hours of work. At that time trade unions could not exist as legal bodies.

The first trade union in Auckland was the local branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which had the backing of its parent group in England. Steam engineering was as new then as airplane engineering is today, and engineers were the aristocrats of the working class world. The union obtained its charter May 29, 1563, and has maintained its unity during the intervening 66 years. Seven years later tile carpenters formed a union, and by 1876 bakers, who worked 120 hours weekly, tailors, printers, painters and shipwrights had been organised into unions and the first Trades and Labour Council set up. Wages were low, bootmakers, for instance, receiving £2 for 53 hours work weekly. The Eight-Hours Demonstration Committee had existed as a separate body for many years, and it lias maintained its separate existence right down to the present under the name of the Labour Day Committee. CHEAP CHINESE LABOUR One of the early big “fights” of the Trades and Labour Councils was successfully to combat a Bill before the House by which the Government was to have the right to bring in 7,000 Chinese to supply cheap labour. Unions demanded that a bonus be given evex-y Asiatic who would leave New Zealand (many had come in the wake of the gold miners) and that a poll-tax of £IOO be imposed on every Asiatic coming to New Zealand, with an annual levy of £2O as a licence to remain. As a quid pro quo Parliament threw out a Bill for an EightHours Day. The Trades Council also formed the Workingmen’s Club, and, by its determined opposition, defeated a scheme before the Auckland City Council to sell the Domain and Cricket Ground.

The beginnings of the LiberalLabour partnership, by which Labour eventually secured its eight-hours day, the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, and all the so-called humanistic legislation now on the Statute Book dates from 1886, -when the “Threats and Loest-Molestation Bill” before the House indicated a determined effort to squash trade unions in New Zealand. The latter essayed to obtain support from the Land and Labour CoOperative Company, the North Auckland Farmers’ Co-operative Association, and the Liberal Association. In the next year, with a Parliamentary election in sight, the unions urged the Radical League and the Industrial Association to combine to support their own candidates. The Radical League refused, whereupon the unions decided to support Liberal candidates, whose main plank was the eighthours day. PARADE OF SOLIDARITY

The Eight-Hours demonsti’ation was what its name signified—a demonstration of the solidarity of workers in their demand for a restricted working day. The unions were mai-shalled at the foot of Queen Street under their union banners, ornate pieces of bunting bearing allegorical devices as well as union names often 10ft or 12ft square. Six stalwart men strode ahead of each union, bearing aloft these symbols of unified labour. The sight of 20 or more unions, numbering more than 1,000 men, all steadfast in their demand for an eight-hours day, marching to the Domain to hear speeches and to indulge in sports, impressed both public and politicians. The first eight-hours industry in Auckland wa-s flour-milling in Queen Street, controlled by Mr. Firth, a very progressive man who was also interested in big land settlement schemes in the Waikato. The procession of unions and bands lasted more or less genuinely until the war days. It then de% r eloped into more of a labour picnic, and from the annual gatherings in the Domain enough money was raised to commence building the Trades Hall.