PRICE INDEX REVISION
Views Of Labour Federation
(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 30. The annual conference of the Federation of Labour today asked its incoming executive to make representations to the Government to ascertain who was responsible for the revision of the consumers’ price index. A Unanimous resolution for such action also urged amendments to the Economic Stabilisation Regulations to ensure “that an application for a general wage order would not be less favourable to the wage and salary earners than if it were taken under the 1948 index.”
Earlier the conference had 'heard Mr F. -P. Walsh, in his presidential report, criticise the revised index. The revision, he said, brought in items hitherto regarded as luxuries. Mr Walsh, seconding the motion by Mr G. H. Anderson (Northern Drivers) to make representations, to the Government, said it was the most important matter to come before the conference.
A supplementary resolution called for the federation’s research office to prepare price indices for three groups—the social security pensioner, the minimum wage worker, and the worker on the average tradesmen’s rates. Such indices would include only items normally purchased by the respective groups. Mr Walsh said that because of the inclusion in the index of items formerly regarded as luxuries but now accepted as conventional necessaries, the index had ceased to represent the same group of persons as was represented by the original series. Refrigerators, telephones and motor-cars had been put in. Official figures showed that only half the households in New Zealand were able to have these amenities.
“If people cannot afford to buy certain goods, then the price of those goods has no effect whatever on their incomes or on their standard of life,” Mr Walsh said. Share of Income Mr Walsh, referring to a “popular line of attack on wageearners,” said that in 1955-56 salary and wage earners received 53.2 per cent, of the national income, the highest since the present Government came into power. “From the time when this series of statistics was started the salary and wage earners’ share of the national income has varied from 43.1 per cent, in 1950-51 (when wool incomes dwarfed all others) to 59.9 per cent, in 1943-44, when all available man power was employed in the armed forces or in industry. “The average share received by them under a Labour Government was 53.4 per cent., and the average share they received under the present Government was 50.1 per cent. “At present, according to these statistics, wage-earners are receiving a smaller share of national income than was received by them in pre-war years, in spite of a growing labour force and expanded secondary industry,” he said.
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Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28265, 1 May 1957, Page 10
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444PRICE INDEX REVISION Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28265, 1 May 1957, Page 10
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