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MEMORANDUM FILED WITH ASSEMBLY BILL No. 2222, REGULATING THE HOURS OF LABOR - APPROVED

STATE OF NEW YORK

Executive Chamber

Albany, May 12, 1899

Memorandum filed with Assembly Bill printed number 2222, entitled "An Act to amend chapter four hundred and fifteen of the laws of eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, entitled 'An Act in relation to labor', constituting chapter thirty-two of the general laws relative to the hours of labor and the prevailing rate of wages".- Approved

This bill carries out the recommendation made in my message to the Legislature that the eight-hour law should be so amended as to make it effective. It will work on the whole an undoubted improvement, but unfortunately it is so drawn as to emphasize instead of eliminating two or three of the defects in the old law. The need of the passage of this law is evident. There is at present and has long been on the statute books an eight-hour law, but it is so easy of evasion that it has been largely inoperative. It is always detrimental to the best interests of the State to have a law on the statute books which pretends to do something and does not do it, and this of course is especially the case where it is highly important that the nominal end sought to be attained really should be attained. The general tendency towards an eight-hour working day has undoubtedly been healthful, and it is wise for the State to set a good example as an employer

of labor, both as to the number of hours of labor exacted and as to paying a just and reasonable wage. It is even more important to reach contractors who do the State work than to reach the public servants of the State proper. Cheapness secured by the employment of gangs of men under the padrone system is cheapness for which the State pays altogether too dearly, for it is obtained at the cost of the sacrifice of good citizenship. It is therefore just that the ordinary employee of the State and of contractors who do State work, should work for but eight hours and should receive a rate of wages not less than that paid for other labor of the same kind where the structure is to be put up, this not interfering with the purchase of a finished product.

The permission to work over time for additional compensation has resulted in such wide spread evasion and nullification of the purposes of the law, especially among contractors, that it is wise to take it away in most cases. Certain needed exceptions are provided for in the bill, but there are other exceptions which must be provided for by the next Legislature, if the bill is not to be a cause of needless expense to the State in various directions. There are some forms of labor where though the man is employed on and off for more than eight hours a day, his labor is not continuous. This is notably the case as regards lock tenders on the less frequented canals. Curiously enough the less work there is to do on a lock, the longer is it necessary to have the nominal hours for labor. One of the most thoroughly satisfactory lock tenders in the State is a woman, the widow of a former lock tender, whose house is by the lock. It is on a canal where work is not regular and days may pass where all told she may

not work more than an hour or two a day. Then will come a day or two when owing to the accident of a number of boats passing she may work on and off, although not continuously, from light to light. It would of course be a great injustice to her to diminish her compensation by providing for a paid substitute to do her work, and it would be a great injustice to the State to pay such a substitute in addition to paying her, when all told the aggregate of her work rarely requires her laboring eight hours all told and never requires her laboring for eight hours continuously. With a shoveler, a mechanic or any other employee who is employed for eight hours steadily, there is no difficulty; but both the law as it at present reads and the law as it will read after the signing of this bill, is not framed so that the case of a lock tender can be met under it, save on those parts of the canal where the work of a lock tender is practically continuous. Here the eighthour law can be and shall be applied; but I shall hold under this bill, as it has been held in the past, that, in the other places where the work is not continuous, intervals of rest continually intervening between the intervals of work, the aggregate of the time spent per day actually at work is to be included in the eight hours; in other words, that we shall not take an arbitrary stretch of eight hours, six of which the man may spend in idleness, and call them eight hours work.

Another class of cases comes under the Superintendent of Public Buildings, notably in the Capitol at Albany. These employees do not average eight hours a day throughout the year, because when the Legislature is not sitting their work is light; but when the Legislature is sit

ting they are obliged on the first four days of each week, to work for much more than eight hours. Ordinarily even in these cases the average for the week will not be more than eight hours a day, Friday and Saturday being days of light labor; and it never averages eight hours a day for the year. Obviously no just purpose can be served by taking a highly paid officer such as the Chief Engineer at the Capitol, who during most of the year may not be employed more than from four to six hours a day, and prohibiting him from seeing to the safety of the delicate. engines under his care during the time when the Legislature and its committees are sitting in the afternoons and evenings. The same thing applies to the elevator men. This difficulty will not arise under the present bill until the first of January next, and I shall in my message to the Legislature request them at once to amend the law so that in the case of public servants who do not in the aggregate during their terms of employment work for more than eight hours a day on the average, they shall be permitted, where any emergency arises, to work for more than eight hours a day, provided always that this amount of extra work is in no case to be carried so far as to make the average per day for the term more than eight hours. The alternative to this would be putting a needless additional burden on the State or cutting down the wages of the employees during the time they are not employed for eight hours a day. It may be that the actual working of the law during the next eight months will develop some additional defects. If so, they can be rem

edied by the next Legislature. Until it has actually been tried it is probably impossible to say whether or not any

defects beyond those indicated above will be found. In any event it is highly desirable that the principle which this law seeks to establish should be really established and that the nominal purpose of the eight-hour law should be in fact fulfilled.

I accordingly sign the bill.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

VETO OF ITEM IN THE SUPPLY BILL-APPROPRIATION FOR REARRANGING LIGHTING OF SENATE CHAMBER

STATE OF NEW YORK

Executive Chamber

Albany, May 12, 1899

Statement of item of appropriation objected to and not approved, contained in Assembly bill number 2454, entitled "An Act making appropriations for certain expenses of government and supplying deficiencies in former appropriations"-Not approved

The following item contained in Assembly bill number 2454, entitled "An Act making appropriations for certain expenses of government and supplying deficiencies in former appropriations", is objected to and not approved for the reasons hereinafter stated:

"For the Superintendent of Public Buildings for rearranging the lighting of the Senate Chamber, five thousand dollars or so much thereof as may be necessary, to be expended under the direction of the Capitol Commis

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