FRUIT PRICES AND LABOUR COSTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 287, 4 December 1941, Page 6

FRUIT PRICES AND LABOUR COSTS

THE Government has shown a sublime contempt for Parliament on * many occasions by the issue of drastic regulations amending the law in vital directions which should have had the careful consideration of the people s representatives before being imposed upon the unsuspecting public. While it exercises these powers to the full under the plea of war emergency it is perhaps too much to hope that it will show respect for the laws which have been passed by Parliament and whicn it rails upon other people to obey. That it is not doing so is revealed in its attitude to the growers of pip fruits. It has endeavoured here to take advantage of the dire necessity of the unfortunate grower, robbed of his overseas market and producing more than the local purchaser can buy at rates which repay the growers' costs, and has demanded, as the * guarantee, that the wages of orchard labour be increased while the amount to be paid to the grower is reduced. This is flouting the arbitration system. To hold a pistol to the head of the Fruitgrowers' « < i emand i* that # lt p ? 3 Ll Ugher rates from a smaller pool, V? e . "IPI! e< *,P® na ! t y ?/ a withdrawal-of the guarantee, is an act which it is difficult to Justify, arid which, if attempted in the opposite «r° u P ot employers, by reducing wages without the consent of the Court, would be punished with all the rigour that the law allows. If higher wages are to be paid they could be provided without penalising the unfortunate grower, who has already been put upon the breadline through no fault of his own. The funds could be raised by a reduction in the cost of running the Marketing Board, using the saving as a subsidy to workers. The board is an enormously costly organisation & i 8 operations have on the average resulted in great increases being P ai . d J?y the consuming public for the goods its handles—oranges, lemons pineapples, for example, whose minimum prices are now about as high as the maximum when the trade was in private hands. The costs °* !> e i~ of inspectors, price fixers and controllers generally who stand between the food suppliers and the purchasers'all have, to be paid for by the consumer, and in recouping these costs as wpll as tho inevitable losses at. times of glut, the division forces prices higher and r » i i nec ® B b®® o ®© luxuries and the chorus of complaint agaiMt rising costs becomes more and more insistent. A Labour Government should be the last to suggest the adoption of a lawless system ibtoit P€rm '" ed W wreaa ' w ™ ld endU'er XTS