RELIEF PAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 10

RELIEF PAY.

EARLY INCREASE URGED. 10/ A WEEK SUGGESTED. (By Telegraph. —Press Association.) CHEISTCHUKCH, this day. The advocacy of an immediate increase in relief rates for all grades of work for unemployed by 10/ a week and the continuance of that increase until schemes are devised for the absorption of unemployed in works at standard rates of pay, was the principal of several decisions concerning unemployment reached at the annual conference of the Municipal Association yesterday. The subject was keenly debated.

It was stated that the cost of giving increased pay of 10/ a week would be £300.000 per annum. It was also maintained, and the assertion was generally endorsed, that the Unemployment Board should produce a statement of its expenditure showing exactly how all its great income was used. Resolutions carried were as follows: —

"That the executive be instructed to go into the whole question of improving tlie conditions of the unemployed by a scheme or schemes for providing work at t landard rates of pay. the scheme or schemes to be financed partly by local authorities and partly by the Unemployment Board, or in any other manner conceived, and that in the meantime the Unemployment Board be asked to increase the wages of all grades of workers by 10/ a week; that the Minister of Internal Affairs be urged to allocate the proceeds of art unions during the winter months to the relief of distress; that this conference recommends to the Government that unemployed men who are ill should, on production of medical certificates, be supported from unemployment funds.

A remit suggesting that the Government should again be urged to abolish Xo. ~> scheme and to use the money allocated for the scheme on reproductive avenues, ensuring full employment at standard rates of pay, was referred to the executive.