DAIRY FACTORY EMPLOYEES.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 September 1920, Page 7

DAIRY FACTORY EMPLOYEES.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —There is some talk of the railway employees refusing to handle butter if it goes up further ill price. I do not think they would be right in doing that, but tliey should get an increase in wages. This would solve any problem of labor, and as the price of meat is going up shortly, of course Wages should go up too, to lessen the prevailing discontent. One section of the community blames the farmer, and vice versa, for this state of things. The dairy industry concerns all the Taranaki people, and as cheese is predominant, this is the subject all people should consider. The cost of manufacture this year will be no more than last year, perhaps considerably less, and the dairy farmer is getting a big price for his butter-fat. Of course the cost of manufacture will be individually much higher, but as for factory cost, it will be about the same. Now, as an employee of the dairy farmer, in the cheese line, I think that he treats his factory employees most abominably in comparison with other workers. In regard to wages, the managers get nothing startling, considering their responsibilities, and eOmpared with other persons holding similar responsibilities. The same may be said of the first assistant, second assistant, and casuals. [Where is the person who works on public holidays now ? Factory hands work Sundays, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and at Easter, too, without getting double pay, as other workers j get. How, why should the farmer give 114s a day to a road workman, and' to freezing works employees ? They are working for the same fanners, yet they, get better treated, niid double pay, too, for overtime. Do the fanners think that this year we will work Christmas Day for the same pay as on an ordinary day? Not us! They can well afford to pay us well this year, also to fit in decent bathrooms as required by law, and to fix up our batches and surroundings. The low wages paid can only attract I casuals of an indiffereht character.—! I am, etc., FACTORY EMPLOYEE. New Plymouth, 16th Sept. (We have excised portions of the letter. —Ed.)