MARKET RATE OF WAGES.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 477, 4 June 1890, Page 5

MARKET RATE OF WAGES.

Mr Withy, in addressing his constituents on Wednesday evening, once more explained his views upon the subject of the market rate of wages. Referring to the statement made by the Secretary of th e Railway Servants’ Society to the Railway Commissioners, when he urged that “A reduction of wages in so large a Government Departmentas that of the railways would act as a precedent in reducing wages generally,” Mr Withy commented as follows: "He maintained that railway servants should nob be paid at more than a fair market rate. Wages had fallen outside of the Railway Department because of depression in trade. Wages represented the share that labour got out of the annual wealth produced in the colony, and if none of the loss caused by depression were taken off the wages of the railway men, it stood to reason that the whole of the burden fell upon outside working men. (Applause.)” Again, in his utterances on the same question as reported in “Hansard” in 1888, Mr Withy said after pointing out the so-called savings that the Government had made in the higher branches of the service, “Now, I think the wages of the others should be reduced.” He also said in the same speech, “It has been made abundantly clear of late that wages given in the Railway Department are above the average market value.”

Now the questions arise—What are wages ? Have they any connection whatever with the value of the labour perfoi'med ? If so, what constitutes a market rate ? Mr Withy himself answers the first query. He asserts that wages are “ ths share that labour gets out of the annual wealth produced in the colony.” Now, as a matter of fact, labour does not get “ a share.” It gets, unless it is united, and can force better terms, a certain amount called wages, which, if calculated as Mr Withy wishes by market rate, means that the labourer will take precisely what his needs and outside competition of those who are as badly or worse off than he is, compel him to take. The payment of wages in this fashion, which is clearly what Mr Withy is in favour of, is an invention of the evil one ; it has such a plausible face, but is so utterly false and rotten when analysed. A labourer is entitled to something altogether different from wages ; he is entitled to a fair share of the wealth he produces. Tho value of the work he performs should be the gauge by which his payment should be measured. If competition and the needs and necessities of the applicant for employment, are to guide the fair and just rate of payment for labour or services rendered, how about the old woman, of whom an inspector of London lodginghouses gave evidence ? He reported finding her “ frying a skinny bis of bacon with some broken greens and potatoes.” When questioned as to her -wages she said, “ thiß ’ere’s my wages. I went to work this morning at 7 o’clock, charing, and I’ve worked till I am fit to drop, and they give me fivepence and them broken victuals—that’s fourpence for my lodging and a penny for the bacon. It’s that or nothing. Plenty others would be got if I didn’t.” That was the market rate for her hard day’s work; it was precisely what her necessities and outside competition compelled her to take, but no one would dare affirm that she thus received a fair equivalent for the value of the work performed. And yet, if Mr Withy is correct, and should his views become popular, which Heaven forbid, this and this only must be the cruel test ot the so-called labour market.

Market forsooth ! Why not apply the market rate of payment to all positions of remuneration ? There are many able men, quite ascapable of governing this colonyand securing order and providing good government as His Excellency Lord Onslow, but who if it came to be a case of competition for the position and a market rate of payment, would cheerfully take it for considerably less than Lord Onslow enjoys ; and so on right down the ranks of the privileged class. Oh, no ; it would never do to impose this test upon them ; they are paid not wages, but a salary, i.e. remuneration according to the value of the services rendered ; they must receive enough to allow them to dress and behave themselves like gentlemen, and of course enough to enable them year by year to pub by a nest egg, to hatch at their leisure when they become too old for further work, and of course also enough to enable them to rear their families in respectability and comfort, and not be compelled to send their daughters and their sons of tender age to factories to eke out enough for the families subsistence.

In former days these privileged ones were pensioned as they passed out of the service, but these are the officers; we cannob treat the rank and file in the same generous manner. They are in fact a different class altogether ; no one in his senses would really think of paying this class anything more than bare wages, and as little as competition could compel them to take, and for as long hours as they could be made to work. That is the market value of labour with which Mr Withy appears to be so wonderfully impressed. Of course, we do not close our eyes to the fact that combined labour may make unreasonable demands —that unions may exhaust the capital fund and cut the ground from beneath their own feet, by insisting upon an undue share for the wages fund, and so rendering it impossible to produce with profit. Thisisthedanger, and it is one against which men cannot be too often or too strongly -warned. A remedy for evils of this description in the past has, no doubt, been found in what is known as the market rate of wages. Men thrown out of work by the contraction of production have under cut the current rate of wages until capital once more found it profitable to employ labour in those departments.

But at best this is a clumsy method of adjustment, destructive both to capital and labour, and the tendency of the present age on the part of employers and employed is to fix standards which will prevent excessive competition, by maintaining prices which, on the one hand, will leave a fair profit to the employer, and on the other will enable workmen to live in comfort.

Of course, it will require more intelligence to work a fair standard rate than ib did to leave the setting of a market rate to the operation of those cruel laws which political economists have for the most part accepted as though they were as immutable in the social economy as the law of gravitation in the physical universe. Butthesuccess which lias hitherto attended the efforts to arrive at a fair standard wage in contradistinction to a market rate, afford encouragement for the hope that, though difficult, the problem is not altogether incapable of solution. Auckland “Star.”