EMPLOYMENT OFFERED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 77, 1 April 1932, Page 13

EMPLOYMENT OFFERED.

MARRIED MEN rN MOUNT EDEN RELIEF FOR RATEPAYERS. The Mount Eden Borougli Council decided last evening to offer employment to all married ratepayers within the borough, if possible, rather than that they should be sent away to camps in the country.

A deputation from the Unemployed Association 'waited on the council to ask for support in a protest against the camps. They said that they were willing to go to the camps if no work was available in the city, but they ensidered the Government should try to give them work where tht>y could keep their homes together. The camps were unhealthy, tjjey claimed, and the Health Department should have more control of them.

.In answer to the Mayor, Mr. T. McNab, who remarked that the camps were better than anything he had had at the war, one of the deputation retorted that when they were at the war they knew their wives were being adequately provided for, but when they went to the unemployment camps, they had no such assurance, and no man could maintain a family on the wages offered.

When the matter was discussed later, Mr. J. J. Mulvihill moved that the council write to the Unemployment Board offering to provide work for marrried men in the borough, and asking that the camp scheme be held in abeyance in the meantime in Mount Eden. He considered that to send away the married men would adversely affect the finances of the borough and the moral well-being of the community. Work could be provided out of the remainder of the drainage loan.

The Mayor pointed out that it would be difficult to raise the necessary money. There were 370 unemployed inHhe district, nearly all married. About half of that number, however, were ratepayers, and he thought that the council might be able to provide work for them.

"This will be the first time we have discriminated between ratepayers and rentpayers," Mr. Mulvihill protested. "Some of them were ratepayers until they lost their homes in the present crisis." He accepted, however, the Mayor's suggestion that the offer be limited to ratepayers, and the motion was carried.