TRADE UNIONS AND THE GOVERNMENT
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The Spectator is obviously so anxious to be both fair
and just to " The Other Side " that I cannot believe that the very grave misrepresentation of the building trade unions contained in your leading article " Trade Unions and the Government " can have been anything but an inadvertency. You say :—
" He (Lord Weir) proposes to employ for the erection of his emer- gency houses men who are now kicking their heels for want of work, losing their aptitude and living wretchedly on unemployment pay. What harm can be done to the building trade unions ? Surely they cannot with a straight face dictate to the whole com- munity and plan out building work so that there may be plenty still left for their grandsons to do."
This passage can only have one implication, namely, that the building trades are trying to prevent the employment
of anyone who is not a member of a building union in the
erection of Lord Weir's steel houses. Now this .has abso- lutely no foundation in fact. • (See the statement of Mr.'
John Armour, Secretary of the Sedttish Building Trades Union, that what is claimed is that Lord Weir should pay
standard rates of wages—" If he does that, the unions don't mind if he employs clergymen and lawyers as ' unskilled labour.' ") This should make it perfectly clear that all the union demands is that men employed in erecting the steel houses shall be paid a certain standard wage. Now, this may be right or wrong, but it is obviously a perfectly different thing to claiming that the unemployed are not to be used on the new houses. I cannot help feeling that it is this kind of misrepresentation which makes the unions hostile and suspicious, and sometimes difficult, as they probably are.— I am, Sir, &c., S. K. L.
[We did not mean what our correspondent assumes, nor is it true that what we did say " can only have one implication." The building unions are trying ,to dictate the conditions and rates of pay under which Lord Weir may employ the unemployed on the labour (mostly unskilled as we understand it) of bolting together the sections of his houses. The building unions do not say that only their own members may be employed on that work. But if they succeed in dictating the conditions under which Lord Weir may employ the unem- ployed of the engineering trades the result will be the same. They will make it impossible for the Weir houses to be built. They will render the building so expensive and so slow that the emergency character of the houses will disappear. The whole purpose of the scheme will then be defeated. If the scheme loses its peculiar virtues it will have to be dropped. The building unions would in that way keep building-work in their own hands and ample work would be ensured, not merely for their grandsons, but for their great-grandsons. In our view it is much better for the unemployed, even though they be skilled workers, to be employed temporarily on unskilled work and at " unskilled pay, than not to be employed at all. Besides the national emergency is so great that we do think some spirit of gallantry in the cause might be encour- aged. It is without exaggeration a matter of saving liff- -En. Spectator.]
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