Minimum Wage Rates Said To Be Too Low

Press, Volume C, Issue 29503, 3 May 1961, Page 12

Minimum Wage Rates Said To Be Too Low

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 2. The national executive of the Federation of Labour was investigating the actual living costs of the average familyin New Zealand, and, so far, it appeared that minimum wage rates were insufficient to enable a family man on a forty-hour week to live on his earnings, Mr F. P. Walsh, president of the Federation of Labour told the annual conference of the F.O.L. today Consequently, he said, men were working long hours to get the money they needed. The revolution in working methods and processes, in particular automation, had put the world of industry out of balance. The standards of a few years ago were no longer suitable to assess the balance that should exist between labour and capital. The rapid advance in science and technology during the Second World War, and the shortage of commodities and manpower after the war, had caused a surge in mechanisation of industry. There had been a second industrial revolution, and, like the first, it had made the rich richer and poor poorer. The consumers’ price index showed that the £ was worth only 12s today, compared with 1949 and New Zealand- j era were finding that they i their wives were going to work to help to maintain i living standards. < "Greater production for i

less effort is desirable: it is a sign of progress. But it a not a sign of progress to find that the benefits from the increased production art going into a few pockets and are giving the workins people little or no improvement in wages for those whe are working, and are increasing the number out of work,” Mr Walsh said. “It appears inevitable, il the Western democracies are to survive, that there must be a cut in the working week so that everyone who needs a job can get one. If greed for private gain permits the present process to go on, our whole economic system will collapse and the door will be open to anarchy.” After detailing the regulations governing an application for a general wage increase, Mr Walsh said the present increase in the consumers’ price index was only the equivalent of 2Jd in the £ and it was not worth while going to the Court “to get little or nothing.” The federation was concerned that it did not seem possible to reward workers tor the increase in productivity, Minimum wage rates had altered little since 1855, according to the effective wages Index and the workers responsible for highest productivity had received nothing from that increase. Productivity had increased between 1946-47 and 1958-59 (the latest figures available) at an annual compound rate of 2.6 per cent, Mr Walsh said.