FARMERS FEEL CONCERN OVER RISING WAGES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 89, 20 May 1949, Page 5

FARMERS FEEL CONCERN OVER RISING WAGES

Concern at the continual raising of workers’ wages and the detrimental effect it would have on the farming industry throughout New Zealand was expressed by the president, Mr A. L. Friis, Te Puna, in his report presented to the annual conference of the Bay of Plenty Province of Federated Farmers at Whakatane yesterday. Farm wages were having to be raised continually to compete in the labour field with other industries and this - was not for the good of the farming industry, he added. “Already this policy has resulted (in the meantime, at any rate) in the dairy industry drawing on its reserves to meet the latest universal rise in wages,” Mr Friis pointed out. “But the most disturbing feature is that it is being done in times of so-called ‘peak prosperity’.” The president said that any failure to make demands to ensure some sort of equation in wages paid by the industry, to those paid by other industries would only result in the gradual depletion of the farm labour ranks, almost to extinction.. This would place the farming industry in an impossible position.

The only solution was to face the problem and demand justice for all the farming industry. “At the same time, we farmers in New Zealand must be prepared to resist, and help other sections of the community to resist, any tactics that demand wages reaching, as the Prime Minister puts it, ‘into the realms of fantasy’,” Mr Friis declared. “We must insist that it is increased personal effort, increased production, leading to decreased costs, that will ultimately be the answer when the recession in overseas prices occurs.

. “The slogan of each and every section in New Zealand should be ‘to help everyone else’ not ‘to hell with everyone else’,” he concluded.