BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1948 YOU SAID IT, MR BAXTER!

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 23, 20 February 1948, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1948 YOU SAID IT, MR BAXTER!

All those workers who have been wondering why there never seems to be any money in the bank or much extra comfort in the home in .spite of the repeated Government assertions that we are all prosperous just now must feel indebted to Mr K. McL. Baxter, secretary of the National Council of the Federation of Labour.

He is reported as having said, at Wellington on Wednesray, that every increase in wages under the present set-up left the family man relatively worse off. He presented figures to his Council to demonstrate how workers with families actually were relatively worse off with every £1 increase in wages.

Cheers for Mr Baxter! From an official of an organisation that has had a lot to do with the setting up of the “present setup” that makes fruity reading.

But it confirms with tremendous force the opinion expressed in this column under the heading of “Industrial Unrest” on February 3. The Beacon then said that more and more workers are coming to realise that constant demands for higher wages will not solve the problem of how to feed and clothe their families. It was pointed out that money’s only value to the average man is its ability to buy needed goods. That prominent officials of an organisation of the numerical and political strength of the Federation of Labour should at last be coming to that conclusion is one of the most hopeful signs, on this Dominion’s political horizon. Let us all trust that Mr Baxter’s summing up of the position will be the signal for intelligent, constructive action in Labour circles. One stresses the Words “intelligent” and “constructive.” Mr Baxter was not alone, though the press report of the Council’s meeting credited him with putting the thing clearly and succinctly. It was on the motion of Mr P. M. Butler, of Wellington, that the meeting of the Council unanimously approved a recommendation to the Government that a Royal Commission be set up to investigate the cost of living in this country. Bravo, Mr Butler! But it is to be hoped the matter will not be allowed to rest there. Investigate, by all means. But let the Government be urged to act. The matter is urgent. Vital. And who is in a better position to do the urging than the Federation? Past events have proved its advice seldom goes unheeded by a Government that, industrially at any rate, seems almost to Have ceased to govern.

So far so good. On the attitude of Messrs Baxter and Butler to the cost of living problem, the Federation is to be congratulated. Here at last is a glimmering of real consideration for the needs of the common man. Here is humanity shorn of sectional self-interest. But will the Federation and its satellites be prepared to face the cure of the ill they denounce? Will the powerful Unions who have whittled down working hours and forced up wages to the point where money has no .drug relationship ; to -prp-v duction be prepared to listen to the proposition that their activities along those lines have contributed in no small measure to the inflation from which they, in common with the rest of us, now suffer?

Will they? And will they be prepared to do anything about it?