LABOR EXCHANGES BILL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2576, 10 August 1909, Page 7

LABOR EXCHANGES BILL.

PURPOSES OF THE EXCHANGES

Tn a recent article on Avhat the labor exchanges, to be established under the Bill which has just passed the House of Lords, Avill accomplish, Mr. F. A. Mackenzie writes:—

“No one professes that the national exchanges will solve the unemployed problem or that they will increase the amount of work to any great extent. What- they will do is to reduce the chaos of the present way of bringing employers and men tgoether to a regular system. Once started, a still wider organisation for dealing with the unemployed problem is almost certain to grow out of them. They will give us_a more accurate idea than we can now obtain of the numbers of the woririess. They will gradually sift out the loafer and" the unemployable. The man Avho crops up at the exchange time after time, losing each job that is found for him, will become marked and known. The tramp —the greatest blot on our countryside—will at once lose the excuse which now forces us to aid him. “The proposed national exchanges are not without their perils. The danger from the army of casuals has already been hinted at. These have swa m--'l the distress committees; they must not be alloAved to blot out the ncAver plan. It is feared in some quarters that tho trade unions Avill seek to confine the use of the exchanges to employers who pay not less than the recognised union rate of wages. Once "there arose oven a suspicion that the exchanges were being manipulated, as forces in the fight for or against unionism their usefulness would be done. “I have good reason for stating that many of the unions will not lend themselves to an agitation for this purpose. Their leaders have in many cases publicly announced that they AA’il] do all that they can to help the new scheme, even by placing their union employment books with them. What they mav ask —the demand is a reasonable one —is that when an employer seeks men because of a strike or a lock-out he shall be required to state that fact. “There is still another development that should come. Why could not the national exchanges work hand m nano Avith an. imperial organisation for curfusing exact details of opportunities and conditions of labor in the dominions beyond the seas? A number of local information agencies in Canada, with headquarters in Toronto or Montreal, could keep the British offices informed of the real facts about labor requirements there. The information could not be gathered better than through the Canadian press. , v “Unless employers co-operate with the new exchangee they must, or course, completely fail. Surely they will realise that a plan which promises some relief to a great national evil m Avorthy of their whole-hearted support.