IMPORTATION OF WORKERS.

Observer, Volume XXVIII, Issue 25, 7 March 1908, Page 2

IMPORTATION OF WORKERS.

Minister and Trades Unions

WITH parrot - like iteration the trades councils of the south are following the lead given a few weeks ago by the Canterbury Trades and Labour Council, and denouncing the very moderate immigration policy which the Government have put forward. The ground for their clamour is still the old one — an assertion that the men and women now employed in the factories are unable to obtain constant employment, and that the effect of the importation, of tradespeople wilLbe to reduce wages. That both these contentions have been shown to be fallacious matters little. The uuionists have made their statements, and stick to them through thick and; thin.

However, it has been made clear by the Minister of Labour that he d.oes not mean to be diverted from, the path ,he has marked out. Mr Millar was interviewed by a pressman in the south

the other day, and indicated that the "Government intend to continue the importation of agricultural labourers and domestic servants, and in a smaller degree of workers in other industries. But the limit of assisted immigration for two years is to be 2700 persons, including 500 girls. This, then, is the bogey that has provoked the trades unions to their hysterical outcry. A little more than a thousand workers per annum, to be spread over a population of nearly a million, and the unionists are afraid tnat the country cannot absorb them without injury to those already in employment !

Verily, the trades unionists who take up such a stand are fainthearted folk. It goes without the saying that the bulk of the importees will be country labourer?, who hardly count from the city trade unionists' point of view. When the remainder are scattered through the various trades in operation in the Dominion, they will hardly provide for the normal expansion of industry, let alone compete for the billets already held. And is it to be supposed that because a few shortsighted trades councillors are iearful of the effect of the competition of a few incomers, the industries of the Dominion are to be restricted in their natural growth ? Mr Millar evidently thinks otherwise, for he still intends to assist tradesmen intx) the country, though on what must be admitted to be a very moderate scale.

In a mild sort of way, Mr Millar snubs the trades unionists, by showing that their outbursts have resulted from their ignorance of the real position. If, he says, they knew the actual condition of some of the trades in the Dominion, and how greatly the output could be increased if more men were available, they would not, if they wished to pee the country progress, carry snch resolution's as they had done. Mr Millar, of course, has special sources of information, and is aware that there are trades in the colony positively suffering for want of labour. It is even doubtful if the limited amount of recruiting that will be possible under the Government's proposals can help them very materially. However, the trade 'unionist outcry has been ministerially answered, and the answer is one which will bring the agitators small comfort.