§ 33. Mr. BARNESasked the President of the Board of Trade if his attention has been called to the fact that the manager of the Glasgow Labour Exchange had prevented the carpenters' and joiners' trade union from inserting in their vacant book, which is kept at the exchange, a notice to members asking such members not to accept employment at a certain works; and if he will take the necessary steps to see that the trade union in question gets the full use of its books.
Mr. ROBERTSONI will cause inquiries to be made into the statement made by my hon. Friend, and will communicate the result to him.
36. Mr. TYSON WILSONasked the President of the Board of Trade if the managers of Labour Exchanges are sending a card marked D/L. E. 8 to employers of labour asking them when they require workmen to state the wages they are prepared to pay, so that suitable applicants may be selected; whether this is practically inviting employers to offer less than the standard rate of wages and obtaining cheap labour to the disadvantage of trade unionists; and whether he will either cancel this card or delete from it any reference to wages?
Mr. ROBERTSONThe card to which my hon. Friend refers has been in use since the inception of the Labour Exchange system. Representations were made to the Board of Trade by the Parliamentary 2104 Committee of the Trade Union Congress in October, 1910, urging that full information should in all cases be obtained from employers notifying vacancies as to the wages they proposed to pay. Apart from this it appears to me obviously desirable that managers of Exchanges should endeavour to obtain as much information as employers are willing to give about their vacancies in order to avoid the fruitless work of putting applicants into touch with vacancies which they will not be prepared to accept.
Mr. TYSON WILSONIs the hon. Gentleman aware that in the case of certain skilled workmen the employers have in many instances offered much less than the standard rate and that owing to this notice having been sent out employers in trades which never offered less than the standard rate are offering less now?