LABOUR REPRESENTATION

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12609, 20 November 1926, Page 6

LABOUR REPRESENTATION

COMMITTEE MEETING HELD IMMIGRATION POLICY CONDEMNED UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM At the monthly meeting of the Wellington Labour Representation Committee in the Trades Hall during the week the following resolutions were adopted unanimously: FREEZING WORKERS’ DISPUTE. “That the L.R.C. place on record its sympathy with the Hawke’s Bay freezing workers in the stand they have taken to secure a living wage for the services they render to the community, and declares that it is a public scandal that between 30 and 40 per cent, of these workers are only able to earn, under an award of the Arbitration Court and in one of the biggest industries in the country, a wage of, roughly, £3 to £3 os a week during the season, and are then dismissed when the labour market is at its worst. The L.R.C. draws public attention to the fact that the employers, whose mouthpieces are advocating an industrial truce, have, in this industry, rejected a proposal to meet union representatives in conference, and have also refused to join with the union in an application to the Arbitration Court for an amendment of the award according to the court’s pronouncement in September, 1925. As the employers have taken up a dictatorial and unreasonable attitude, the L.R.C. appeals to the workers through their industrial organisations to give every support to the freezing workers in their just claim for adequate remuneration,” P.A.T.A. “That the Wellington L.R.C. strongly expresses the opinion that the Proprietary Articles Trade Association (P.A.T.A.) is a combination calculated to do injury to the working classes by raising prices for the profit of its members. The L.R.C. protests that the policy intended by the P.A.T.A. to refuse supplies of articles to traders who decline to sell at the prices fixed, is a dangerous restraint of trade and a violation of the spirit of existing legislation, and that its effect must be to do injustice to the public. To prevent any further increase in the cost of living by price-fixation at the will of a profiteering combination, the L.R.C. calls upon the Government to counter its operations.” MIGRATION POLICY. A motion os follows received the unanimous support of delegates:— “That this meeting of the Wellington L.R.C. again condemns the policy of assisted immigration as carried out by the New Zealand Government. It points out that, despite protests from all sections of the community during the worst period of the present unemployment trouble against the haphazard operation of this policy and the need for its modification until the unemployment problem had been properly dealt with, statements from London affirm that tho immigration policy will be continued, and that shiploads of immigrants are on their way. “The Labour Representation Committee emphatically objects to the attitude of the Government on this matter because no new avenues of employment are being opened up, because new arrivals at present will accentuate an unemployment problem which still obtains, because this policy will create an even worse problem next year, and because it is grossly unfair to the immigrants, after they have broken up their homes, to confront them here with the anxiety and loss of unemployment. The L.R.C. repeats that immigration to be successful must be accompanied by developmental policies assuring work and housing, and that in the absence of these, the interests of both immigrant and New Zealand worker will be sacrificed. It holds the Government culpable for the suffering its casual methods are producing.”