UNEMPLOYMENT QUESTION.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 313, 7 November 1929, Page 3

UNEMPLOYMENT QUESTION.

FORESTRY OPERATIONS. Skilled and Unskilled Work. It may have surprised' some people to observe the relative prominence which forestry work was given in the Government’s recentlyannounced programme of developmental works, which we hope will prove to be not merely' relief works (writes the Waipa Post). But the report which the Hon. W. A. Veitch, Minister of Labour, has recently received from the Committee on Unemployment, and which he handed on to Parliament, proves that its inclusion was not haphazard.

The personnel of the Committee commands considerable respect, for a wide variety of experience is represented in its membership. New Zealand’s staple productions are of a kind which divides the year for many of the unskilled workers into two sharply-defined periods—working and loafing (or looking for some temporary side-line until the worker’s seasonal avocation re-opens). This hJs been known to all who have a nodding acquaintance of their country’s economics, and the Committee on Unemployment does not fail to stress it.

The Committee, however, does not leave it at that. It has searched for suitable industries which could provide winter occupation for the summer workers, and it has placed forestry in the forefront. For the rank and file it is not a skilled job, and it should not test the physical endurance of men whose seasonal occupations are in the freezing works, the shearing shed, or the harvest field. For the more self-reliant type the alternative of trapping for skins in the winter is no new suggestion. In the past it has yielded good money to those who do not mind physical discomfort, hard work, and comparative isolation. To those of softer fibre or more stringent family ties the opportunity to fill in the lean months of the year working for the Government and drawing regular pay will probably appeal, if the repugnance to going from town to country, where the latter is in its least attractive garb, can be overcome.

In this connection the Committee makes a most valuable contribution which has to do not only with the problem of unemployment, but with those of the drift from country to town and of increased production. “ Farming,” states the report, “ with its dependent industries, provides the greatest employment for labour at present, and offers the widest scope for furtiier employment.” The report even describes that scope as “ practically unlimited.” One infers from the report that on farms a great deal of winter work is practically left undone because the farm workers migrate to the towns as winter sets in. But is it not more because the farmers themselves have, in the winter season, less money with which to pay wagfs ? The employee expects - May, demands —his pay every week. The dairy farmer gets a very small factory cheque during the winter months, usually insufficient for his own family needs, and therefore dispenses with his employees. A southern contemporary com- } ments that one almost compelling reason appears to be that the employees leave because the rigours of winter would be unendurable in the quarters available for them. That may be—in the south; but we do not hold with its application to the northern districts, though there are, of course, exceptions. The Committee would like the State to intervene to help solve the housing problem, and points out that the State has recognised the wisdom of helping to provide workers’ homes

in town areas, the result being many very fine blocks of houses in various towns throughout New Zealand, and the question is asked why the same policy does not apply in country districts, especially the best farming areas, where permanent- work offers

! all the year round. It appears that J there is no legislative bar whatever; the matter has simply been neglected j hitherto. The ideal of every rural worker having his own farm is written down as chimerical. Possibly there is not suitable land for all, but more probably not every man is capable of managing his own affairs, particularly in these days when farming tends to become more and more scientific and seems to require more and more working capital. The Committee’s report touches incidentally on this aspect when it advises a re-modelling of our general education scheme so that our youth may be better prepared for the practical work of life. The restrictions placed on employers, in many of the industries, in employing apprentices are another factor causing unemployment. Legislation restricts the total of apprentices—and rightly so, to prevent abuse of an excellent system of training—but the limit is too low, with the result that the over-supply of youths seeking to learn a trade takes up casual occupation—and continues through life as a casual, instead of as a skilled worker. Parents therefore have to choose between giving their sons education fitting them j for a profession—and the professions ! are claimed to be over-crowded already—or allowing them to become casuals, with the result that they have to compete with other unskilled labour in a market that is, to say the lealst, precarious and ever-changing. However, there is another very sound suggestion in the report. Finance for the provision of winter employment must be secured beforehand. At present it is a matter of casual grants or political expediency. In other words, our estimates attached to the Budget should provide yearly a sum to cover the cost of a programme which can be expanded or contracted according as unemployment waxes and wanes. Altogether this report is a most compact and helpful document on a grave subject, even though it envisages a fair proportion of the male population of New Zealand planting trees and hunting opossums in the winter. There will, of course, always be a proportion of what the Americans call hoboes in the classification “ unskilled workers,” while attention seems not to have been given to the considerable number of public works employees who regard such employment as permanent instead of as provided to help them over the slack period of each year.—Waipa Post.