SHOULD RESULTS BE COUNTED?

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 283, 11 April 1929, Page 4

SHOULD RESULTS BE COUNTED?

When Sir Joseph Ward talked about fourteen shillings a day on unemployment works the Labour Party considered that a gratifying advance had been made, provided that the fourteen shillings ' was a time-pay-ment minimum. But between timepayment fourteen shillings and a small contract system calculated to permit an average worker to earn fourteen shillings a day there is a great gap; and the Labour Party complains that Sir Joseph has jumped from one side of the gully to the other. So fundamental is the difference between day labour at fourteen shillings, and co-operative contracts on which a man may earn fourteen shillings, that the situation should be definitely cleared up. A certain amount of terminological looseness is common in political expressions, but is no excuse for the cross-purposes into which the Government and the Labour Party have needlessly drifted. . In the course of an indictment of the Prime Minister for alleged change of front, the Labour Party says in its annual report:— The policy of the Labour Fariy was clear and specific—;employment should be so organised as to find useful work for all those able and willing to do it: this employment should be paid for at rates sufficient to enable the mother to provide all the essentials for the home. But, in putting unemployed on road, or railway excavation work, who or what is to select men “ able ” to do it ? Is the selection to be made by means of a contract or payment-for-results plan, or is some Government employee to merely enlist on timerwage all those who say they are able ? The former systeni gets the work done, but the Labour Farty, in sticking for a time-wage minimum, says nothing about results and merely stipulates a payment that will provide “ essentials for the home.” So the Ward-Labour entente uhcordiale reveals, behind the mist of words, the old fundamental division. It cannot very well be glossed over, and the show-down is inevitable sooner or later. While the Public Works Department’s small contract system will receive no bouquets from Labour, the Ministers who have succeeded Labour in Victoria like it well and are talking about applying it to their own relief works.—Wellington Evening Post.