ENGAGEMENT OF LABOUR

Taranaki Daily News, 18 October 1930, Page 5 (Supplement)

ENGAGEMENT OF LABOUR

SYSTEM AT THE WHARVES.-COQFMITTE-E SUBMITS SOHEMiE. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, October 16. A special committee of the Auckland Watersiders’ Union has submitted an improved scheme for engaging waterfront labour. The scheme is based on the findings of a special committee set up by the Belgian Government, and provides for a division of the workers into groups and the provision of each man with a disc. When notified by a company (that a number of men are required, a (union official will take an equivalent .number of discs from groups in a disc container and hang them on the engagement board. The removal of the discs twill \be taken as an indication that those men have accepted an engagement. (When the men are discharged their discs will be returned to the containers. In submitting the report, the committee says that under an ideal scheme “there would be no quarelling, strife, or envying each other over big jobs, and no necessity for men to bring down .ducks to the foremen who engage labour. Your committee frankly admits that you were never fit to have a better system. Your carelessness, your idleness, your downright selfishness are at the bottom of the mischief the union has tumbled into. / “In regard to the engagement of labour any member must honestly confess that the present system is unfair and unreasonable, that it fosters all kinds of subterfuge, bribery, and crawling. ■i Surely we can devise a better system whereby the -whole membership can be assured of earning some money.”