RATIONED WORK.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20234, 19 February 1934, Page 7

RATIONED WORK.

Tramways Board Stands Firm. AGREEMENT CONFIRMED. Suggesting that the Tramway Board should not be the first to introduce rationing of staff, although he believed that nation-wide rationing of employment would provide a cure for unemployment. Mr C. E- Tones, at this afternoon’s meeting of the board, moved that the board’s decision to ratify an agreement made with the Tramway Union authorising rationing be rescinded. The agreement was made at the request of the union to enable men in necessitous circumstances to be re absorbed. The motion was lost. The chairman (the Rev J. K. Archer) said that the agreement was already in force, having been agreed to by the union. Mr Jones congratulated the men on agreeing to ration work and said if the principle could be put into effect throughout the whole social and economic life of the Dominion, it would cure the problem of unemployment. Whv he had suggested postponement of the agreement was to ask why the board should be first to penalise its own men. 11 hy put on more men to penalise the others by rationing them? Mr Howard: We only put on twelve instead of sixteen. Question oi Retrenchment. Mr Jones: When retrenchment comes in the winter, who will be the first to go—the new men or the old staff? Mr J. Mathison: Why suppose they will be dismissed? Mr Jones: Suppose they do. Mr Mathison: On the question of competency. ' Mr Jones asked if the records -would be examined when the time came for retrenchment. The Chairman: All these records were carefully surveyed before anything was done. Mr Jones said that it had been said that the men who had not gone on their hands and knees to the Tramway Union had not been considered for reengagement while a coterie who bad “ kept in ” with the heads of the union had got back into the service. He would like to have a deard of that sctatement. Mr W. J. Walter second the motion pro forma. Replying to the chairman, Mr Jones said that he was not opposed to rationing, but to making a start with it among the tramway men. “ I’ve never heard in all my life a more irrelevant speech than that of Mr Jones,” said Mr Mathison. He sugge"*ed that M T self conversant with the records of all men in the service. Rationing had been in force before the strike. “An Extraordinary Spectacle.** Mr E. J. Howard, M.P., said that the board had the extraordinary spectacle of Mr Jones rnovnig a it-u.., which he did not believe. The men who had been reinstated had been selected because they had the largest families, and after that the question of the men’s suitability was considered. The offer of the union to agree to rationing to enable these men to be reabsorbed was one of the finest things the speaker had ever heard in his public life. Mr Jones had come to the board full of suspicion, and when Mr Jones was longer in public life he would learn that it was not -wise to come to the board with idle talk from passersbv. Mr G. Manning said that the agreement was made with the union, and any members of the staff who had not agreed with it could have settled the matter at the union meeting. The motion was lost. Mr Howard: He did not even vote for his own motion.