Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1901 — Inefficient English Labor. [ARTICLE]

Inefficient English Labor.

An English architect, writing in the Nineteenth Century, traces the threatened commercial decline of England to the harmful domination of the labor unions. While these organizations are steadily forcing up wages, they are at the same time cutting down the actual working hours until these are now said to average little more than four hours of honest work each day. Union men in the building trades in England are expected to work fifty hours a week in summer and fortyseven in winter, thus making an average of about eight hours a day. But when they are paid at noon on Saturday many of them are not seen again on the building until the following Tuesday, by which time they have spent all their wages. Their absence throws the contractor into aerinna trouble, but he cannot put new men in their places. This is only one of many ways in which the unions are said to delay the work and make it ex pensive.