ACUTE POSITION

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20273, 16 August 1937, Page 11

ACUTE POSITION

FARM LABOUR SHORTAGE. PRODUCERS CONCERNED. YOUTH PREFER TOXVN LIFE. Although there are many applications on file from farmers requiring farm labour, there are no young men on sustenance in Hamilton available, said a Hamilton placement officer this morning. Actually, he said, there were only four young men on sus tenanee in Hamilton and none was suitable for farm work. The Hamilton placement office was more or loss inundated with applications for farm labour and even registry offices had been in communication with the office Inquiring if men were available. XVlth more dairy herds coming in daily, the farm labour question Is becoming increasingly acute. In view of the subsidy farm labour scheme Introduced last month, Waikato farmers were sanguine of having their wants supplied at the beginning of the season, but as far as the XX’aiknto Is concerned thero are not the youths available. Position In Auckland. It Is reported that there are numbers of young single men drawing sustenance In Auckland, but the Auckland placement officer states that many of them refuse to take farm work. They preferred to draw £1 a week in town rather Ilian work for £2 2s 6d and their keep In the country. Of 100 youths questioned within three days, only one expressed willingness to take farm work, commented the placement offloer. No attempt had been made to apply compulsion to this class of sustenance men, he stated. The normal procedure when a tradesman declined to accept work at his trade, or labouring work if he was deemed filled for it, was to treat him as “voluntarily unemployed” and cut off his sustenance for h period. However, young men who were offered farm work, having had no experience in it, were not in the same position.