SALARIES OF LABOUR LEADERS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16688, 10 March 1920, Page 7

SALARIES OF LABOUR LEADERS.

EFFECT OF £IOOO A YEAR. The salaries of, trade union officials have always been the cause of much jealousy and bad feeling in the trade unions, and the recent increases in the salaries of the officials of the N.O.R. have intensified this jealousy among the rank and file in the Labour movement, (says,the Morning Post). In the current issue of Solidarity, a Syndicalist paper which represents the shop stewards and workers’ committees, this question c 9 payment to trade union leaders is discussed by' Mr, E. T. Whitehead, of the Vehicle Workers’ Union. “Wo of the Workers’ Committee movement,” writes Mr. AVhitehead, ore not out to wreck and destroy the t’.ade unions. It should bo our policy, however, to purge them and cleanse them, and transform them into the weapon with,,which to gain the world for the workers. As a first step it is i bsolutcly necessary to abolish the present system of .1 small army of well paid officials ranging from Jimmy Thomas and his £IOOO a year, to the £6 and £7 a'week organisers, and. as a preliminary move, the following resolution has been tabled in my owa union, the vehicle workers-.—‘That the wages of the whole of the chief officials of this union shall he paid weekly, and shall bo the wage of a top grade L.G.0.C., ’bur, driver, working a nominal week of 18 hours, and tno wage of all dtlier full-time employees shall be the similar wage of an L.G.O.C. ’bus conductor.’ ”

The object ot this proposal is to drivs out of tho unions ambitious men. “I he place for ambitious men is not with the proletarian army in the class struggle,” says Mr. Whiteherd. "Men that Want a high wage for their brains, and are ambitious, should go outside and help the capitalists exploit the wage slaves. That is their spiritual heme.” If a permanent official is given a middle-class salary, “with power to save money and use it for •investing’ and bleeding other workers,” and living in a middle-class neighbourhood and wearing “well-cut middle-class clothes, and entertaining on a, middle-class scale, with his job and salary the more secure the less industrial unrest there is; it is a £IOOO to a monkey-nut that his ideas change exactly as his econoifiic position changes, and he joins tho great caucus of Labour Bleeders.” This comrade anticipates that the Labour leader with personal interests “will squeal like a stuck pig at the idea of coming back to the position that he occupied as a worker once himself.” and such leaders “will rush off to Government jobs at the'Ministry of This and the Ministry of That at high screws and fat pensions.” The Labour movement advocates bro thc-rhood and comradeship. The above is an example of tho brotherly and comradely feeling that prevails within tho movement 1