WORK ON FARMS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 260, 3 November 1941, Page 8

WORK ON FARMS

"GIRLS WONT GO" ATTRACTIONS OP CITY The difficulty of securing farm labour was emphasised by speakers at a meeting of the Auckland District Council of Primary Production this morning, when it was decided to inform the National Production Council that it was felt more could be done by consistent appeals to people, both men and women, and particularly those of the leisured class, to offer their services in war emergency avenues, especially in the agricultural industrv. In regard to obtaining girls for farm work, Mr. J. S. Elsbury, Placement Officer, said the city offered attractions which made it difficult to get girls to leave the city. "They will not go," he said. lie quoted cases of girls of 16 years earning £3 10/ a week in a city factory, h'oir.e girls had been earning as 'much as £8 a week, and some £5. An inexperienced woman was paid £2 18/ a week for sewing buttons on clothing. Recently he had made an appeal for men to work in the cheese industry, and so far only one man had responded.

The chairman, Mr. R. G., Clark, said the National Council of the Women's War Service Auxiliary was moving to set up a women's land army, and he thought the principle should be supported.

After considerable discussion the council decided that the Government be asked to form a labour battalion, the members to be uniformed and to receive soldiers' rate of pay, the farmer to pay up to the amount provided under the Workers' Agricultural Act, and the men to be formed into groups or centres where their services would be most necessary.