SECURITY TAX.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 215, 10 September 1940, Page 6

SECURITY TAX.

It takes a great stretch of imagination to dissociate the 5 per cent general wage increase from a set off against the increase of the national security tax. No one would object to this if it were universal, covered soldiers' pay. allowance* to soldiers' wives or dependents, pensioners, Government employees, every class of the community. The general opinion is that the matter was fixed between the Federation of Labour and the Government. Take, for example, the tramway employees, some of the clerical employees, watenside workers, seamen and a number of other trade unionfcts, who within the past few months obtained an increase. Take the coastal seamen who received f 1 15/ per month. War risk (nil). Do they get 5 per cent increase on this? If this war risk were justified, I say it was not, then surelr the voluntary fighting forces mre entitled to an increase of several times thfe amount when thev go overseas, and surely the traffic control men are entitled to it. There is more chance of a bomb being dropped on them than there is of such boats as the Ronaki, Clansman, etc., hitting a mine; hugging the coast as they do there is more chance of their hitting the mountains in the moon. CITIZEN.