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The Southland Times. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1940. The Rising Spiral

fTIHE FIRST of the claims made on J- the Government as a I'esult of the Arbitration Court’s order increasing the wages of award workers has been met by granting cost-of-living bonuses to the lower-paid State employees. Rates of pay in the civil service are not high (except in the case of a few specially privileged positions of recent "creation, such as that held by the Controller of Commercial Broadcasting), and, as Mr Nash has conceded, it is only equitable that the lower-paid public servants at least should receive any increases which are \ granted to the whole body of industrial workers. By and large, these State employees are probably still not as favourably placed as award workers: every Government finds it much easier to order other employers to provide higher wages than to provide them itself. But, unfortunately for Mr Nash, the argument of equity can—and will—be carried very much further before the last is heard of the Court’:, order. The dairy farmers will soon be presenting their claims for a rise, “in equity,” in the guaranteed price; pensioners and superannuitants'will probably follow. The fact is that if the rule of equity is to be strictly applied and the rise in wages justified by the rise in the cost of living, then every wage-earner in the country, and every farmer’ whose income is related to wages and the cost of living, are entitled to the extra 5 per cent, granted by the Court to what is at present a privileged section of the community. Test of Democracy

It is only necessary to carry the argument of equity to this point to see how foolish the Government was to allow the Arbitration Court to run free while it took powers to control every other aspect of the nation’s economic and financial life in war time. The result has been that the Court has set in motion an inflationary tide which, if it is not resolutely checked, will submerge all the Government’s efforts to keep the Dominion’s war economy on a relatively sound basis. Again and again Mr Nash has emphasized that war means a restriction of the civilian consumption of goods and services, that this restriction will inevitably bring a lowering of the general standard of living, and that the raising of wages can provide no escape from the dilemma. He has enlarged on the particular dangers of inflation for the rank and file of wage-earners, the men on £5 and £6 a week. The Prime Minister, Mr Semple and other members of the Cabinet have delivered similar warnings. Yet by leaving the control of wages to a tribunal which was not required to consider the special economic conditions of war, they have acquiesced in a policy that will produce the very dangers which they have warned the workers must at all costs be avoided. At a time when the people are looking to their leaders for courage and strength of purpose, the episode is not a cheering one. Willingness to make economic sacrifices in war time is a test of democracy no less searching than the acceptance of compulsory military service. The Government was bold enough to introduce conscription, but it has not yet summoned up courage to take the control of wages (as well as of prices) into its own hands and to exercise that control firmly and without regard for sectional interests. If Mr Nash wants the country to escape the disaster he has so clearly foreseen, he and his colleagues must steel themselves to the task that lies before them, regardless of the political consequences.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ST19400918.2.30

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Southland Times, Issue 24234, 18 September 1940, Page 4

Word count
Tapeke kupu
607

The Southland Times. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1940. The Rising Spiral Southland Times, Issue 24234, 18 September 1940, Page 4

The Southland Times. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1940. The Rising Spiral Southland Times, Issue 24234, 18 September 1940, Page 4

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