WARNING TO SHEEP-FARMERS

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1921, Page 8

WARNING TO SHEEP-FARMERS

PASTORAL INDUSTRY THREAT, “A SECRET CONFERENCE.” Wanganui, August „31. •At the annual meeting of the Wanganui Freezing Company to-day, strong reference was .made to the increased cost of carrying on industries, especially in the matter of labor. Mr. W. J. Polson, Dominion president of the Farmers’ Union, interviewed on the subject to-night, said: —

‘•Are New Zealand sheepfarmers 'awake to what is going on just now in Wellington? They are already being ground between the upper millstone of low values and the nether millstone of high production costs. A conference behind closed doors between the freezing companies of the Dominion and the workere in the industry has been proceeding for the past week with a view to arranging a working agreement. The freezing companies’ first interwt is to provide dividends for their shareholders. They are likely to take the line of least resistance. The workers are out for more and still more wages. They want a substantial increase, not over prewar rates, but over the fabulous and ruinous rates ruling last year. They demand 45s per 100 all round for Slaughtering sheep and lambs. They want a large increase in the minimum rates of pay for time workers, increases of from fourpence to tenpence per hour. In snort they are demanding a 33 1-3 per cent, increase over the baair rate in the existing award, and 8.3 per cent, over last season’s rate of pay, which included a 25 per cent, bonus added to the basic rate. ' z “Nor are they satisfied with this. They demand a new and absurd set of conditions. They demand that only one learner should be employed to every eight slaughtermen, notwithstanding Hie fact that the present rate of one learne” to every three slaughtermen has done nothing to . relieve the scarcity of slaughtermen. They demand io be fed and clothed and coddled and paid for all sorts of idle time. Tn short, they present a set of demands which would, if agreed to under anything approaching existing market conditions, wipe out the pastor? 1 industry of New Zealand. Their present wages increase over 1914 represents a 75 per cent, rise and on the amount of work done a probable actual increase over 1914 of from 120 to 130 per cent.

“What the new demands would ’meat one can only conjecture, but that the} would mean an enormous increase is un questionable. Already the freezing rate from paddock to London have increase* as follow: 1914—Lamb. L2d; mutton Lid; beef, 1.045 d. 1921—Lamb, 3| ! < (lews per cent); mutton, 3bl net beef, 31d net. That labor is responsibh for a considerable proportion of this i: evident from the figures available. Coin parisons of cost of materials and wage got out by'the freezing companies re | veal the position. “The pastoralists of this coun-tr I should wake up and see to it that the; lore represented when this dispute come i before the Arbitration Court, or the; may find these disastrous charge acquiesced in and passed on to them t pay. Speaking for a large section o my fellow-farmers, I wish to make i clear to the freezing companies that w will not tolerate any such action o their part.”