World of Labour June 15, 1895.

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, JUNE 15, 1895.

The World of Labour.

At the World's Miners' Congress which lately met in Paris, a proposal was made to limit the output of coal by miners refusing to work any more than four days in every week.

SECRETART Brennen has received the following subscriptions in aid of Joe Short, collected at Boatman station by Joe Smith, £12.7s. Collected at Victo and Charlotte vale, by J. D. Smith, £7 13s. 3d.

A CORRESPONDENT complains that police are employed in carpentering work at a certain sub-inspector's dwelling up Winton way. He considers this unfair in view of the number of carpenters out of employment.

MR. Tozer's attention is directed to the fact that butchers and assistants were employed killing and boiling down on Sunday, May 26, at a certain boiling down company's works not a hundred miles from Barcaldine.

THE New Zealand Workers' Union is asking the Government to accept the names of unemployed from the secretaries of unions instead of having the men visiting bureau and police stations day after day.

IN the New Factories Bill before the English House of Commons John Burns moved that- “On and after February 1^st. 1896, no child under the age of thirteen shall be employed in any factory in Great Britain.”

ACCORDING to John Burns 240,000 workers in England have been granted an eight-hour day, and another half million have secured shorter hours, all through the eight-hour movement. That's something for unionism to be proud of.

THE Wilcannia branch of the A.W.U. has passed a resolution that failing the branch officers being able to get from the Pastoralists' Union local agreements “they will work solely for unity under any disadvantages.” There is the proper kind of ring in that resolution.

THE Railway Employe's Union of France has decided to purchase out of the funds of the union shares in the different privately owned railway companies, so that delegates may be legally empowered to attend the meetings of shareholders and directors in the interest of the workmen.

ACCORDING to recent cablegrams from London, the American Plutocracy is following out the lines laid down in “Caesar's Column” in so far as they are organising military regiments from which trades unionists are excluded, with a view of holding the toiling masses in slavery.

MR. Edwin Bannister, an old-time Wellington (N.Z.) comp. has passed over to the great majority at the age of 68. Australian comps who passed through the N.Z. Government Printing Office half-a-dozen years ago, will remember the old man well. He was a conspicuous member of the piece-room in those days. His son Bob is publisher of the Wellington Evening Post.

“SHOULD Government pensioners be allowed to compete in the labour market” is a question which is receiving a lot of consideration in Melbourne just now. The Victorian Attorney-General has expressed the view that Parliament should stipulate that pensioners receiving £200 a year and over should be prohibited from competing with those who have no pension to fall back on.

THE manager of a certain boiling-down company in the Longreach district ordered his men to work the 36 hours intervening between 6 a.m. on Saturday and 6 a.m. on Monday, in two shifts of 18 hours each, thus infringing the Sunday Observance Act. Being connected with a wealthy company, the directors of which are well in with the local “justices,” the manager escapes punishment.

THE Brisbane Civil Service Co-operative Company should throw open their share list to the outside public, and no doubt they would immediately have an acquisition of town shareholders and customers. The public believe in co-operation. The great difficulty is to get the store or factory started. The Civil Service Co-operative Store appears to be conducted on good business lines, and the only thing wanting is to give the general public an interest in the concern.

WRITES our special: N.Z. trade unions have had to print new rules for registration under the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, Wellington Typo. Society has done a very wise and diplomatic thing – they have secured the sanction of master printers to the rules, with signatures attached, and in the books you will find the list printed, comprising nine firms; and in their wisdom they have gone a step further by advertising the list in the daily papers, with this note: “All sympathisers with unionism and those who believe in a fair day's pay for a fair day's work are requested to patronise these firms.” Let other unions go and do likewise.