DAWN TILL DARK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 12

DAWN TILL DARK.

CHINESE WORKERS.

TOMATO GROWERS' CONCERN.

COMPETITION PROBLEM,

All the tomato growers who were present at yesterday's meeting of the Auckland Commercial Gardeners' Association agreed that one of the first things for them to put before the Fruit Commission when it came to Auckland was the problem of Chinese competition.

The Chinese, it was asserted by the president, Mr. 11. Empson, paid wages as low as 25/ a week. Their employees \\ork(d from daylight till dark, and even after dark sometimes went on packing. Their standard of living, moreover, was so low that their expenses were negligible. As a result the market was glutted in the season.

Other members supported Mr. Empson, stating that the aims of the association to introduce co-operative buying and selling to further the use of scientific methods, and generally put the tomato growing industry on a sound basis, could not go ahead until this problem had been solved.

Under existing conditions, said the vice-president; Captain A. A. Currey, the European growers could not compete. They paid regularly £3 10/ a week to adult workers for reasonable hours of labour, and though tliev could produce just as good fruit as the Asiatics they could not compete with sweated. labour. This question was akin to that of the Cook Island growers, who paid native labour as low as 2/ a day.' This, Captain Currey said, lie had on reliable authority.

Mr. Carr, one of the growers present, suggested that the only remedy was to force the Chinese to pay the same wages and work their employees the same hours as the European growers. On returning from the war, lie continued, many market gardeners had found the district flooded with Asiatic producers. In California it had been the same, and there the Chinese had been put out of business and deported to make way for returned soldiers. He would not suggest so dramatic a measure here, but unfair competition and sweated labour should be eliminated.