New Federation

Progress, Volume XVIII, Issue 1, 1 September 1922, Page 11

New Federation

IN THE BUILDING TRADES.

AN IMPORTANT MOVEMENT.

With the object of ultimately securing uniformity in the matter of awards in the various trades affected, a movement is on foot for the establishment of a Dominion Building Trades Federation, announced the Wellington Evening Post recently. A certain amount of difficulty has been encountered in overcoming local prejudices, but the scheme is reported to be making progress, and district councils have been set up in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin. Negotiations are now in train for the formation of a national council with headquarters in Wellington, on which will be representatives of the different building trades, such as the carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers, plasterers, painters, building trades’ labourers, etc. When the new federation becomes an actual fact, it will be one of the largest industrial organisations of its kind in New Zealand, and it is believed that the next step to follow will be afffiliation with the Alliance of Labour. The constitution of the Alliance provides for organisation along the lines of industry, and it is impossible for a purely craft federation, such as the Painters’ Federation or the Carpenters’ and Joiners’ Society, to be linked up with its scheme of industrial departments as separate entities. Before affiliation with the Alliance can be obtained, it is first of all necessary that all allied trades in a particular industry shall be associated in one Dominion federation.

The organisation of the Alliance of Labour embraces a number of different departments, the Transport Workers’ Department, for instance, including the drivers, seamen, Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and tramwaymen. With the affiliation of the new Building Trades’ Federation in the building department, the strength of the Alliance would be considerably augmented numerically. Up to the present, registration of the Building Trades’ Federation has been refused by the Labour Department on the ground that the workers in the respective building trades have federations of their own crafts to which they can belong. Officials of the federation point out, however, that they are not very much concerned with this point just now, as they are anxious to perfect the details of the organisation first, and work up to the ideal of obtaining a uniform set of wages for the various classes of tradesmen involved.

The oldest method of preserving timber, and one often used to-day, is that of charring before being placed in the ground. It was practised by the ancients even as far back as prehistoric times. Soaking timber or burying it under corn were methods of seasoning practised by the Romans, who also steeped wood in oil of cedar to protect it from the attacks of worms.