PRIVILEGED WORKERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1061, 27 August 1930, Page 7

PRIVILEGED WORKERS

ARISTROCRACIES OF LABOUR ESTABLISHED ATTACK IN UNEMPLOYED LEVY Special to THE SUN WELLINGTON, Today. “Workers under awards of the court and civil servants today are in a privileged position as compared with other labour. We are establishing aristocracies of labour in various watertight compartments supported under State guarantee at a level of money wage which the national income cannot maintain.” said Nil*. Jl. I>. Acland, president of the Now Zealand Sheepowners* and Farmers’ Federation, at the annual meeting today.

“Our Government is now contemplating the creation of a further watertight State guaranteed section of the community by providing, through taxation. that people who find themselves unemployed may be provided with work at a fixed remuneration. If the farmer’s position does not improve in the near future, there will be an enormous addition to the ranks of this section of the community. “All this, however, has to be paid for from the money we receive in return for our primary products sold on the world’s markets. PURCHASING POWER FALLS “How can we or anyone else expect to maintain the present standards o? money wage and costs in New Zealand when the purchasing power on our overseas markets is reduced to approximately half of that which alone made it possible for us to pay out on our present high level ot costs’: "We find ourselves in financial straits, and it is useless to pretend otherwise. What is our duty? Is- it not the duty of our Government to lL_l the people the whole truth and point the way for the country by the practice of economy in every possible direction ?

“The days of maximum payment and case with a minimum of toil are past, and on our terribly shrunken income, the country can no longer afford to continue its lotus-eating existence. All the talk we hear of shorter hours and improvement in the standard of living is platitude.

“Deflation of costs must keep pace with deflation in prices. If we can accomplish this, then our lesser amount of money wage will purchase an equal if not a larger amount of produced goods, but we shall never increase the purchasing power of that lowered wage while we artificially attempt to maintain a money wage which makes it impossible to employ all our available labour to the maximum, and so produce our goods at a price which will bring the worker back to as sound a position with regard to purchasing power as he was in prior to the drop in world values of prod Lice. REVIEW OF MONEY WAGES

“It is useless for politicians and Ministers of the Crown to tell the country that the standard of living or money wages must not be reduced. Money wages fqy all classes, including wageearners, professional men, shopkeepers and public servants, must be reviewed “In Queensland, the Arbitration Act has been amended to exclude all rural workers. This simply means that the city workers are to benefit at the expense of the rural worker.

“The claim that is frequently put forward that every man has the right to demand a job at an arbitrarily fixed rate of wage (and the Arbitration Court takes up this attitude) is analogous to the farmer saying that he is entitled, if the wool-buyer and meatbuyer won’t buy his produce, to have the Government take his produce at a fixed price. This any honest politician knows cannot be done.

“With regard to the proposed unemployment levy. ls not this equivalent to saying to the primary producer, ‘You shall maintain an army of men at a wage you cannot afford to pay on economic grounds, and if you don‘t do if (and you cannot), then I propose to take it from you by another method. namely. taxation.’ “The only solution for thta producer will ultimately be to join the unemployed. as the time is. fast arriving when it will pay many .producers to be destitute as they will at least get some return‘for their labour which they do not now get." -