UNEMPLOYMENT CAMPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 299, 18 December 1935, Page 6

UNEMPLOYMENT CAMPS.

I Married men in tliese unemployed camps consider we have not been shown the slightest ' justice in the distributing of the Christmas bonus. We have been classed full-time workers at standard rates of pay, £3 per week less tax 2/, with mess account deducted, which leaves £2 10/ for 40 hours, with sick and wet time abolished. The full levy of 5/ per quarter is demanded, we are separated from our homes, and at all times full railway fare has to be paid. Some of the married men on the sustenance rates are drawing just about the. same rate as we are, yet we are in these camps, two homes to keep, and are not to be granted any bonus. We fill the U.B. form the same as the sustenance men, yet we are told we are classified the same as Public Works men and the men who are classified as railway relief workers at 48 hours a week for £3 12/ and free railway pass. We, the men in these camps in the Franklin County, have one full week due to us,' which was termed "extension time." We were compelled to have this reserve of 40 hours in hand, yet r we have tried for months to get compensation from the Unemployment Board with no success. The grand total of hours that the men in this camp have been denied payment for amount to 012 hours. Tliev Franklin Council has received one "week's work per man free, and the Unemployment Board put the money back in its iron-bound chest. So if the present Government had given the men in the camps one extra week over the seven days allotted v.hey would only be giving us what we were justly entitled to. We married men are really tvorse off than last Christmas. We appeal through your valuable paper for justice. We had subsidy and rations last Christmas, hut none this Christmas, when all the unemployed were promised something over and above what the previous Government gave the unemployed during the last four years. Anomalies were sure to creep in; these anomalies have stampeded right into the midst of the married camp workers. .Mr. Stalhvorthy fought this question of the 40 hours due to us. See "Hansard," Vol. 4, OCXLII., page 021-027, but the Minister side-stepped.

WILLIAM SIMMONDS, On behalf of Married Men in Mercer Camp.