CARPENTERS PUT OFF

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20839, 22 September 1937, Page 6

CARPENTERS PUT OFF

“AXE OVER THEIR HEADS’’ By Telegraph—Press Association WELLINGTON, September 21. Fifteen Wellington carpenters were discharged from the State housing construction job at Lower Hutt last Thursday, and carpenters from Great Britain and Australia were kept on. The secretary of the Wellington City branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (Mr J. Moulton) stated to-day that overseas labour was engaged through advertisement in overseas papers. One such advertisement in the “Glasgow Daily Record” offered a written guarantee of three years’ work. Some local carpenters had been several years on relief work at low rates, and the housing scheme was not only intended to meet the shortage in homes but to provide work for New Zealand tradesmen. When the men were discharged he brought the position under the notice of an officer of the contracting company in- charge of housing construction, and had since received an assurance that they would be taken on again. The fact still remained, however, that these men would have to work with “the axe over their heads” all the time, while the imported labour was able to carry on under the guarantee.

Mr Moulton said that it was hard on some of the carpenters who had had long periods out of work, and who had a good deal of leeway to make up in their private economic positions. It was only fair to mention the offer of re-engagement, but the distinction between guaranteed work for the imported labour and the uncertainty of employment for the local men was worth bringing under public notice. A man on the job said: “I’ve no objection to the men from Home, personally. After all, we fought side by side. However, there has been an industrial revival over there, and they should not be brought out here to share In any recovery which is rightfully ours.”