LEVEL OF PENSIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26636, 5 December 1947, Page 4

LEVEL OF PENSIONS

UNION’S PLAN

SAME AS POLITICIANS Industrial Correspondent WELLINGTON, Dec. 4. A payment of £8 a week for social security and war pension beneficiaries is proposed by the New Zealand Waterside Workers’ Union. The biennial conference of the union, which concluded today, decided to demand that the Government give everyone the same age benefits as members of Parliament had taken for themselves under the legislation recently enacted. “ We consider the Parliamentarians’ preferential pension scheme belated recognition that the present social security payments are inadequate,” said Mr T. Hill, secretary of the union, to-day. “ Those who have given 40 to 45 years of service on the farms, in the fields, in the factories and mines and on the wharves are entitled to £8 a week as much as are defeated or retired politicians.” Mr H. Barnes, president of the union, asked why New Zealand politicians should tell the world that they had the best social security system on earth when the £2 5s a week age benefit was not enough for them. Furthermore, they might not have to wait until they reached old age before they became entitled, under the new legislation, to their £B. The trade union movement is often accused bitterly by its critics of promoting class war,” Mr Barnes added. “ I say emphatically that what the politicians have done is class legislation in its worst form.”