"HIGH ENOUGH."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 201, 25 August 1937, Page 11

"HIGH ENOUGH."

PRESENT WAGES. EMPLOYERS' SUBMISSION. i STANDARD RATES CASE. "My thesis on this occasion is that there is nothing in the present economic condition of the country to call for any departure from the 1925 standard of wages, except to the extent that it has had to be adjusted because of the shorter working week," said Mr. D. I. Macdonald, secretary of the Canterbury Employers' Association, in opening the employers' case when the hearing of argument for the fixation of standard rates of pay was continued in the Arbitration Qourt yesterday afternoon.

"The trend under recent legislation has been to extend the field of industry over which the Court has a direct influence," Mr. Macdonald said, "and probably never before has the range of the Court's direct influence on New Zealand industry been so great as to-day. Consequently never before has the decision of the Court in such a case been of such widespread significance and importance." • Different Wage Movement. Mr. Macdonald traversed historically the various v/age movements that had taken place during the life of the Court up to the 1925 pronouncement. The last declaration of standard rates prior to the 1931 reduction had been: Unskilled labour, 1/10 an hour; semi-skilled, 1/11 to 2/1 J; skilled, 2/3. Under this pronouncement, he maintained (and, he said, the Court ltad also agreed) that thfe workers had received very liberal treatment. He then gave what he considered to be the Court's standard rates at the present time. These were: Unskilled, 2/0.2 per hour; semi-skilled, 2/1.3 to 2/4.05; skilled, 2/5.7. "These rates," he said, "are arrived, at _by equating the 1925 rates to a 40-liour week from a 44-hour week. The Court itself, in fixing awards in the last Wellington and Dunedin sittings, virtually adopted this basis, and where' settlements have been Reached in conciliation councils since September last, except in the case of a few of the sheltered industries, parties have virtually accepted the standard. He quoted Mr. Justice Frazer, in pronouncing the 1925 rates, as saying that "when taken in conjunction with the increased basic rate, these concessions bring the total earnings of the 'basic worker well above 60 per cent over the 1914 standard." Broadly reviewing the economic condition of the country, he said that at a time of rising prices like the present it was all the more important that the Court should weigh most seriously the ability of New Zealand's industries to absorb, and at the same time flourish under,., increased costs. Wages increases could not fail to increase costs of production, and in many cases such costs were cumulative. Increased costs and prices must, in the end, result in reduced consumption, followed by a falling-off in production and employment. Unemployment After 1929. "The major cause of the rapid increase in .unemployment in New Zealand from 1929 onward," lie added, "was undoubtedly the inability of industrialists, both primary and secondary, to get their internal costs adjusted to the reduced spending power which resulted from the fall in export prices. Any increase in internal costs in excess of the improvement in export prices at the present stage in New Zealand's recovery from the depression cannot fail to set back this recovery." He quoted figures to show that wage rates in New Zealand had increased from the years 1925 and 1926 onward, and that throughout the past eight years wages had been relatively higher than retail prices. Wages in 1929 were 63 per cent higher than in 1914, and the cost of living 60 per cent higher. Latest statistics showed, however; that the average of wages rates was now 64 per cent higher than in 1914, but the cost of living was only 46.3 per cent higher. The cost of living at present showed no necessity to increase wage rates, but rather the reverse. Finally, he said that the Court had in all previous general pronouncements recognised the necessity for declaring standard rates on an hourly .basis. There seemed to be no necessity for departing from that custom.