Piecework pay rejected

By being paid at the rate of 9d per yard, temporary labourers in the employ of the Taieri Drainage Board were able to make 9s per day.

But the engineer reported at yesterday's meeting that the men had refused this after three days' experience, and preferred to be paid 1s per hour for eight hours' work.

The reason, he said, was that they had to work too hard to make up the 9s, and the men said they were not going to "knock themselves out" for this price.

The engineer had therefore been obliged to cease the piecework system and revert to day labour.

He added that in the constitution of the moving population at present there appeared to be an absence of the navvy element, the chief supply being in the shape of painters and others who were temporarily out of work.

He was, however, able to get plenty of men at the day wage rate - not on the piecework system.

• Harvest operations in the Tapanui district are rapidly drawing to a close, and the mills are now busy, with every prospect of a short run.

Generally speaking, the crops may be described as light, but, although short in the straw, they are well headed, and thresh above expectations.

The sample all round should be good, as a great quantity of the grain from the time of cutting to stacking did not get a shower.

Early harvests are fully appreciated by the farmers, and this must be one of the earliest on record for the district.

• It may be remembered that a few years ago what now seems to be an irksome restriction was put on the sawmill trade of the South-west, Coast Sounds.

The reason assigned was the necessity for preserving the scenic attractions of the national park reservation.

One thriving establishment at Southport, Chalky Inlet, was, to the loss of its proprietary, wiped out altogether, and no further application for sawmill sites on this country was entertained.

Now, however, says our Bluff correspondent, a better feeling has supervened, due probably to Mr Thomas Mackenzie's accession to office, a site has been granted to Messrs Bates and Hudson, in the immediate neighbourhood of Revolver Bay, and on the last trip of the Invercargill a mill plant and machinery were landed at the company's jetty in good order.

It is a compact concern, which may not improbably be the forerunner of more extended operations. - ODT, 8.3.1910