THE HOTEL WORKERS’ DEMANDS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1046, 24 March 1910, Page 20

THE HOTEL WORKERS’ DEMANDS.

SHOULD NOT THE PUBLIC TAKE A HAND? THE RETALIATIVE POLICY. We are not surprised at the failure of the Wellington Conciliation Commissioner to -bring the parties to the Hotel Workers’ dispute to an agreement. It is- tolerably certain that, once the public properly understand the meaning of the “irreducible minimum” of the demands made by Mr. E. J. Carey and Mr. Thomas Long on behalf of their respective Unions, they will agree with Mr. Beveridge (whose remarks as reported in “The Dominion” are reproduced elsewhere) that those demands are both “unwarrantable and unjustifiable,” and that they would but add to the many burdens shouldered by a long-suffering public were they conceded. At present, we nave neither the desire nor the intention to review the demands, the nature of' which has been clearly shown in the contrasts dealing with the New Zealand and Sydney awards, and the new claims of the local Unions,’ which ■ were published in- the “Review” of the 13th inst. But there is this to be said on the subject. The public have a special and a direct interest in the matter, because compliance with the Union demands would mean substantially increased cost to the travelling public, and a general raising of board and lodging tariffs, which to the “man in the street,” who breakfasts, lunches and dines at hotels or restaurants is a very serious matter, with no corresponding return for the increased outlay. Mr. Carey, in reviewing the situation from his standpoint, put the position very clearly. “The ‘Trade,’ ” he said, “had two alternatives —to raise the tariffs, or to continue to get it out of the women workers and scullery men at 22s 6d a week.” That remark clearly shows that Mr. Carey recognises it is the public who are to be made to pay the piper if his claims prevail. And the public have, therefore, just as much right to express an opinion upon the subject as Mr. Carey—more so, in fact, because Mr. Carey proposes to tax them for the benefit of unskilled labour that, in the case of most young men and young women engaged in it, as also of old men and old women, ' is well enough paid at 22s 6d per week, plus the board and lodging, which Mr. Carey so conveniently omits to mention when speaking of the rate of payment. • • • • TAKING IT OUT OF THE TRADE. The worst feature of the business is, however, found in the militant attitude adopted by the Labour leaders towards the Trade itself. Handicapped as they are by the Local Option vote, which is used and manipulated by such people as Mr. E. J. Carey almost solely as a means of vindictive retaliation, the hotelkeepers of this country have practically no alternative but to submit to demands made in the “stand and deliver” fashion that is now becoming so common. We had a case in point in connection with the Auckland agreement. That was formulated by Mr. Long and presented to the Auckland L.V. Association within a few days of the Local Option polls of 1908. Discussion upon its details was practically barred; it had to be accepted or rejected instanter. But, although, through a technicality, the agreement has no legal force it is still being honourably observed by the Auckland licensees, who were most certainly the victims of a bit of very smart practice, it being well understood that if they re-

jected the terms advanced by Mr. Long on behalf of the Union the workers would be urged to vote the “NoLicense” ticket. M,r. Carey, again, is known to haye done all that he could at the 1908 Local Option polls to secure the carrying of “No-license.” Valiant champion of the workers’ interests as he pretends to be, he is now admittedly prepared to go to the length of urging the workers to further measures of retaliation against the employers, for what he is pleased to term the “unjustifiable attitude” they have taken up in electing to send the dispute between the hotel workers and themselves to the Arbitration ; Court. “He would,” he said, “draw the attention of the Court to the way in which the employers had set about to defeat the ends of the Conciliation Council,” and he declared “there would be such a howl throughout the length and breadth of the country that the hotelkeepers would be sorry for the way they had acted.”. Language of this character can only be regarded as foreshadowing an attempt to set the country against the Trade, because it has elected to stand by its legitimate right of appeal to the Court,

against what it considers to be the excessive and unwarrantable claims Mr. Carey advances. With the cunning of a bush lawyer, moreover, Mr. Carey proposed that the agreement he submitted should continue in force for twelve months only, so that on the eve of another Local Option poll further pressure could be brought to bear upon licensed hotelkeepers. It seems to us that both in the cry he has raised against the hotelkeepers, and in the “howl” he proposes to raise through the country Mr. Carey does the cause of Labour no good, and much real harm, alienating the sympathy of moderate men, and incidentally stirring up strife in quarters where only harmonious relationships have hitherto prevailed. But like all paid agitators Mr. Carey agitates without any regard to the rights and comforts of others, and while calling for “justice” for one class of workers, loses sight of the injustice his claims would inflict on others.