FARM LABOUR.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 332, 13 January 1937, Page 2

FARM LABOUR.

SUBSIDY URGED.

Reply To Minister Of Labour’s

Doubts.

That the subsidised training of sustenance men for work on dairy farms was an essential remedy for the present labour shortage was affirmed by the Auckland provincial president of the Farmers’ Union, Mr H. O. Mfellsop, in a statement made 1 recently.Regarding the opinion expressed at Hamilton by the Minister of Labour, the Hon H. T. Armstrong, that the shortage whs not so acute as had been alleged in some quarters, Mr Mellsop said that this was probably true of the actual demand at the present time, but nevertheless large numbers of farmers had been reluctantly compelled to allow their womenfolk and children to work in the milking sheds. "There is an unsatisfied demand for competent, reliable men who can be depended on to stay the season through and who can do all farm work,” he continued. "It will be readily seen that a great risk is run with large herds where the men leave at short notice with a certainty of a job after a week or two on holiday. "Herds have been cut down and women, some well on in middle age, are now milking for the first time in their lives, rather than put up with the incessant worry of the farm labour problem. The shortage that exists —and there is a distinct short age —gives the farm hand a complete freedom of action and places the farmer with a herd that must be milked in a deplorable position. “The remedy suggested by the Minister is that the farmers should take untrained men and teach them to milk. Would the Minister suggest that any other trade take untrained men and pay full wages while teaching them, their trade? A farm hand cannot be efficiently trained in a few days, a few weeks or even a tew months.

"Proposals have been made to the Minister that farmers should take untrained men, now on sustenance, paying them a suitable smaller wage and giving them that training that would ensure their being kept in occupation for the future, and not a charge on the community, as at present. Our proposal was that the Government or the Unemployment Board should subsidise, by the amount of sustenance now being paid, the training of these men. “No question of a subsidy on farm labour comes into this proposal. It would simlply be that the Government, instead of paying away sustenance money, with no possibility of any return, would be using the unemployment funds to train men in a useful occupation that would be a distinct asset to the men and to the country."