'INCESSANT WORRY'

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 3, 5 January 1937, Page 3

'INCESSANT WORRY'

FARMERS' PROBLEM. SHORTAGE OF LABOUR. UNION'S REPLY TO MINISTER. The statements made by the Minister of Labour, tlie Hon. H. T. Armstrong, at Hamilton, that the shortage of farm labour is not as acute as had been made out in some quarters, also that the remedy for any shortage is for the farmers to take untrained men and teach them to milk, is replied to by Mr. H. O. Mellsop, president of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, Auckland Province. Mr. Mellsop asks if the Minister would suggest that any other trade should take / untrained men and pay them full wages while teaching them the trade, and he points out that a farm hand cannot be efficiently trained in a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months. That the sTiortage of farm labour is not acute at the present time, Mr. Mellsop says, is possibly true, but there are, he contends, large numtiers of farmers who have reluctantly been compelled to allow their women folk and children to help in the shed. "There is an unsatisfied demand for competent, reliable men who can be depended on to stay the season through, and who can do all farm work," states Mr. Mellsop. "It will be readily seen the great risk that is run with large herds where the men leave at short notice with a certainty of a job after a week or two holiday. "Herds have been cut down, and women, some well on in middle age, are now milking for the first time in their lives rather than put up with the incessant worry of the farm labour problem. The shortage that exists, and there is a distinct shortage, gives the farm hand a complete freedom of action and places the farmer with a herd that must be milked in a deplorable position. "Proposals have been made to the Minister that farmers would take these untrained men, now on sustenance, paying them a suitable smaller wage, and giving them that training that would ensure their being kept in occupation for the future, and not a charge on the community as at present. Our proposal was that the Government ot the Unemployment Board should subsidise (by >the amount of sustenance now being paid) the training of these men. No question of a subsidy on farm labour comes into this proposal. It would simply be that the Government instead of paying away sustenance money with no possibility of any return would be using the unemployment funds to train men in useful occupation that would be a distict asset to the men and to the country."