UNEMPLOYMENT TROUBLES

Evening Star, Issue 20061, 29 December 1928, Page 8

UNEMPLOYMENT TROUBLES

STILL 180 NAMES ON GOVERNMENT REGISTER To a certain 'extent the distress caused by unemployment lias been relieved by the work made available through tlie £2,000 grant given by the Government to the City Council. Nevertheless, the possibility of getting a share in tin’s work has acted like a clarion call upon men who were not registered at the Government Labour Bureau, and the result is that, although thirty married men with families have been settled in work, the number of names now on the official-unem-ployed list is practically the same as before relief came. The figures stand at ISO. Of these 115 are married men. Fifteen of the thirty married men provided for by the Works Committee of the City Council commenced work on Boxing Day, and the remainder made a start this morning. It is probable that another batch of men will he engaged after the holidays. The list of w-n-ks which already has been published will bo partly or altogether complete d in about ten weeks’ time, when it is expected that the Government grant will have been expended. A COMPLAINT AND ITS ANSWER. 'two unemployed men state that in response to a notice in the 1 Star ’ of Monday, December 24 _ (stating that preference would be given to married men with dependents who have resided here six months), they attended tho Labour Bureau on Friday, December 28. The official there asked married men with dependents to step up. Although each of these men had five deo indents the; wer lo'd that there was “ nothing doing,” but that they might get a start later. No single men were engaged, although it is alleged that married men with one child were taken on. In reply to this the department stated this morning that the few married men with one child who were engaged bad been on the books for many months. In the first place, moreover, the department bad been rushed to find te necessary men, because it was only at noon on the Monday that they received word tc procure on that afternoon as many men as possible of those who were to start on the Thursday (the holidays, of course, intervened). Before, this first selection was made there was, of course, no time to insert a notice it- the papers, and it was with some difficulty that fifteen married men were engaged on the Monday. On Thursday crowds of workers came to the bureau, hut it was then a case of providibg for the most necessitous cases. Preference was given to those with the largest number of dependents who had been longest on the list.