WAGES AND PRICES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 87, 12 April 1940, Page 6

WAGES AND PRICES.

The Federation of Labour has asked the Arbitration Court to fix a date for hearing an application for a general increase in wages to offset increases in the cost of living. A discussion on the general question has been suggested by the Employers' Federation and may be held next week. This question is one affecting far more than the unionised wageearners and their employers; it affects, as consumers, every man, woman and child in the Dominion. It is bound up with the Government's war-time financial poliey, concerning which the people know little and ought to be told a great deal more. The federation wishes the country to embark on a policy "wiiieh, in certain conditions, would result in the "vicious spiral" of rising costs and wages that everybody, including the federation, would wish to avoid. Owing to the combined effect of import restrictions and war conditions, imported goods, which enter largely into our cost of living, are both dearer and scarcer. For some, goods made in New Zealand have been substituted, but others are simply not obtainable. Increased purchasing power will not make them available, but it will increase the consumers' competitipn for goods that are available, and the competition will drive up prices. The federation's proposal, in essence, is that nearly as fast as prices rise wages shall be raised, too. By following that policy one section of the population might be relieved of some of the burden of rising prices—but only at the expense of other sections. Has the federation thought of those sections

of the people, including pensioners, whose incomes are fixed? Has it thought also of the civil servants, and does it propose that the Government should raise their salaries, too? Perh;] p- the federation conceives that the servants have their own organi-ation (though tlie pensioners have not) and that it is concerned exclusively with its own members' interests. But there is one organisation—the Government—that i-s supposed to serve the interests of all. and the Government should consider and declare its policy in the questions bound up with the federation's proposal. It might well do so before the conference i≤ held.