FIRM’S VAIN EFFORTS.
The statement made by Mr. Henry Billinghurst, alluded to above, is as follows:
The old firm of pianoforte makers, John Brinsmead and Sons Limited, who, have been established for nearly 100 years, have been obliged to serve the whole of their employees with notice of their intention immediately to cease work at their factories. This decision affects some 300 workers of both sexes, some of whom have been in the employ of the firm for over forty years. It has been arrived at after long and careful investigations on the part of the management, and the step has been taken with the keenest regret by the directors. Probably no firm in the country has had the welfare of its workpeople more at heart than Brinsmeads. Practical schemes for their betterment, whenever brought forward, have been adopted, and throughout the five years of war the whole of the workers who responded to Lord Kitchener’s call (more than one-third of the total number of employees) have regularly week by week had their Army pay made up to their full factory wages by the company.
As in all trades throughout the country, wages have enormously increased, particularly during the last year and a half. Simultaneously with the increased rate of wages, all materials and component parts of pianos have advanced to an exorbitant extent, while to-day it is no longer possible, under existing circumstances, to manufacture pianos at a price where they can be sold, even in the home markets, at a reasonable figure. In the question of export (and Brinsmeads exported over 1,000 pianos a year before the war) the case is worse, as added to the cost of production are the exceedingly high costs of freight, insurance, dock dues, &c., and the result has been that their great overseas trade has been rapidly diverted to other countries, where production is cheaper and more certain. There is no quarrel whatever with the Brinsmead workpeople on the wage question. The directors, although as recently as last August they entered into an agreement very largely to increase the rate of pay to all classes, on a further demand being recently made, offered again to raise the standard – to that adopted in the highest-paid kindred trades.
Mr. Billinghurst, in conversation, said there was no question of competition – German or otherwise – being responsible for the present state of affairs. If the men had only worked as hard as before the war, per man, the firm could have continued to make pianos at a profit. He had practical evidence that the firm had the sympathy of their fellow piano manufacturers.