THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1947. LABOUR ON THE FARM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26635, 4 December 1947, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1947. LABOUR ON THE FARM

It is difficult to imagine what was in the mind of the spokesman for the New Zealand .Stock and Station Agents’ Association when, in giving evidence before the Royal Commission on Sheep Farming, he recommended that steps which would normally be regarded as “ almost revolutionary ” should, if necessary, be taken in a national effort to make more labour available for farms. The answer that suggests itself is that some form of direction might be introduced. Such a course would be revolutionary indeed, even though justification were sought in the argument that farming is the basic industry on which the whole economy of the country depends. It would be repugnant to workers and farmers alike, since to the farmer a reluctant and unwilling worker, who is not prepared to adapt himself to the conditions of country life and employment, is worse than no worker at all. There is, however, no likelihood that the suggestion will receive much consideration in official quarters. A prerequisite to the adoption of any such proposal would be a clear and unequivocal declaration by the Government that it considered farming of greater importance than the motley of uneconomic industries which it has fostered under the protective mantle of its policy of import control and selection—and such a declaration is improbable in the extreme.

The reasons for labour being unobtainable to enable primary industry to operate at full efficiency are the elementary ones of wages and housing. The Government has decreed that secondary industry shall be permitted to offer to its workers rewards that make the farm employees’ scale appear contemptibly low, and has directed also that almost the whole of the building resources of the country should be utilised in the provision of homes for city dwellers. These two attractions, high wages and ready-made homes, hold a lure that even' the families of farmers are frequently unable to resist, and have been responsible for an acceleration of the drift to the cities that has deprived the country of some thousands of potential producers of foodstuffs. Earlier in the hearing of evidence before the Royal Commission the general secretary of the New Zealand Workers’ Union complained that the farmers had taken the attitude that they had to keep farm workers generally to the minimum rate because of the position of the farmer on poor land. In the opinion of the union, he said, this defeated attempts to attract men to the high country, for the farmer on good land was in a position to offer wages above the rates fixed in agreements. This argument might have some validity were it not for the fact that up to the present the Government has been responsible for determining what proportion of the fixed prices for primary produce should be expended on labour. An analysis of the figures for the 1940 dairy season, for instance, shows that wages and keep for labour amounted, on the average, to 43.2 per cent, of the value of the output, and in the preceding year they were estimated at 50 per cent. Only those farmers on the most fertile lands can afford to pay rewards in excess of such rates, and their reluctance to do so is accentuated by the knowledge that a substantial proportion of the returns from the sales of their produce has been withheld by the Government for the purpose of subsidising wage costs in other industries. The problem of farm labour could readily be solved if the economy of the country was organised to strike an equitable balance between rural and city rates of remuneration, and if married people in the country were permitted to have homes in which to live. The. Government is well aware that to permit farming to become too deeply involved in the industrial inflationary spiral would be to precipitate the inevitable disaster but, as events have proved, it is not prepared to face the alternatives.