The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1914-04-10
CONTRACTORS GIVE THEIR
S|OE Of LABOR SITUATION

|
To the Public:
AS we have been drawn into this
discussion, neither seeking it nor de-
string it, We will simply state some
facts, as we do not care to appear
in the wrong light, and we rely
upon the sane judgment of our
friends and the public to decide who
is just, who is attending to their
own business, and who is attempt
ing to run somebody's else business
The alleged pretext for the bitter
ness that the local carpenters union
is attempting to create against us as
contractors has side-tracked consider
ably from its original line of attack,
because the union soon recognized
that their action was so unjust -
that they were so utterly inconsist-
ent-that they forgot to mention
the original cause of their troubles;
THEIR TROUBLES, not ours. fol
| the events of the past few days have
+, not injured or Inconvenience us in
the least.
The following are the facts We
have in our employ two expert non
union shinglers There is no Shing-
lers' union in the city. They have
Singled and lathed several houses for
lus; no complaint was ever made on
any OF our union jobs. because of
the presence of these men; in fact,
one of the unions pets introduced
and recommended to us the employ
ment of these shinglers and urged
us to hire them When we sent them
over to northwest Lakeland where
we had rush contract to build a
house in thirty days, they concluded
that that was the time to hit us
Mr.. Joe Brown had been unfortu-
nate in having his house burn down,
and We promised him couple of
rooms and a roof in two weeks, but
union men, whether they were Of
fcials or no TIVE say not just now ;,
go out to the building and order the
shinglers down and off the job No
three months notice was given, or
even three days. We put our shin
glers back, and the union men left
the job; we did not discharge any
one.
What could we do? Mr. Brown
needed his house; we did just what
lany sensible man would do we
lhired some good men to carry out
our contracts. Our men had left MS;
we did not discharge one. We had
over dozen new men the next
morning: we finished the Brown job
| a week ahead of time. If union men
had stayed on it, 1t would he still
incomplete.
We have not advertised for men,
We do not need to. We want Lake
land men to do Lakeland work. and.
while the union is so zealously
guarding the depot lest some tool
chest might arrive, we are driving
nails and attending to our own af-
fairs, We are not keeping others
from working. nor are we begging
any to work for US
The third day after the union
withdrew the men from all of our
Jobs, we notified the union that af-
ter April We were going to work
nine hours. AS to the reason for this
step allow us to say that we have
tried the eight hour day and we can
not afford TO adopt it any longer
This one hour has cost us ST 200 in
the last six months. Why? Because
80 per cent of all work is contract
work, and we have to figure against
contractors who work men nine and
ten hours The remaining ten per
cent OF the work is percentage work,
and il is given, of course, to men
who work the most hours.
In the second place. we are not
trying to make the union men work
nine hours; they can do as they
please, so will we. Any man who
wants to loaf on the street, or 20 to
/ the trains. or 20 10 the mines and
work ten hours for less money, it is
his privilege, We shall not coerce, at
tempt 10 interfere, or influence him