WELL-PAID COOKS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18831, 20 March 1931, Page 10

WELL-PAID COOKS.

DISPUTE IN ARBITRATION COURT. By Telegraph—Press Association WELLINGTON, March 19. The Arbitration Court is hearing a dispute affecting cooks and stewards in the employ of coastal Shipping Companies. The Union asks for increased pay (approximately fifteen per cent.) and the Companies for a reduction of about the same amount. Mr Bishop, representing the employers, said wages since 1914 had been increased by about sixty per cent, but the actual earnings by nearly one hundred and fifty per cent, because of the alteration in conditions of work. He said: “We find assistant stewards drawing from £204 to in one extreme case £4OO a year, plus their keep. Stewards and cooks draw from £275, £334, £375. £363, £415 and £531 per annum, plus keep. Is it any wonder, in face of these figures, that there is an outcry against the cost of transport and other sheltered industries in New Zealand?” He asked where was our sense of proportion. It was time we faced facts fairly and honestly. The disparity between the earnings of those workers producing for export and those in sheltered industries must be removed. “Here is perhaps the most glaring example of that disparity to be found in the whole Dominion. We confidently ask the Court to correct it.”