RELIEF WAGES.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20835, 20 April 1933, Page 7

RELIEF WAGES.

TO THE EDITOR OP IHK Sir, —Your correspondent F. H. Grant, in a criticism of the City Council's policy of subsidising the pay of its relief workers, ha?: submitted an argument worthy of vhe bitterest enemy of the relief workers, and of the workers generally. Councillor J. McCombs, M.P., has very effectively replied, and leaves very little to add. However, in the first place, Mr Grant bases his argument on a false basis, as relief workers are not employed by the year; and second, Mr Grant carefully evades one of the chief working-class fundamentals: i.e., the rate of wages an hour. The relief worker working for other local bodies earns Is 3d an hour and for the City Council Is 9d an hour. Mr Grant knows lull well that the City Council is net responsible tor the fact that the Government instituted special legislation dealing with the question of taxing subsidised relief workers' wages. He knows that that act of the Government was directed against the workers nf New Zealand generally and particularly the Chnslchurch City Council. He knows also that the City Council is not responsible for the * humiliations heaped upon the relief workers by the Government in the way of means tests or the maximum amounts to be earned before relief can be obtained. He admits my statement that fourday men received £7 4s from other local bodies and £7 lis from the City Council, but very carefully omits to say that for other local bodies the men work 16 days and for the City Council 12 days. Mr Grant is advocating a reduction in the rate an hour. Time in which to supplement the earnings by other means is of no account to him. But will Mr Grant tell us why relief workers are so keen to work for the City Council, or why the relief workers rebelled against the introduction of the new No. 5 scheme? Was it not because they were asked to work longer periods for less wages? I wonder what Mr Grant would have to say if the Citizens' Association gained control of the City Council and instituted a campaign for the introduction of a 48-hour week in place of the 44-hour week, at the same wages a week, but at a reduced hourly rate. How can he make this advocacy square with the growing and genuine demand of workers the world over for a shorter working week §t an increased rate an hour, which jh effect is what the City Council is doing? I wonder what Mr Grant would say of the union secretary who advocated that his union agree to a longer working week at a reduced hourly rate?

I thank Mr Grant for his information and advice, but wish to inform him that I do not intend to adopt it, but prefer simply to disagree and treat it as an affair of opinion.—Yours, etc., G. T. THURSTON. Trades Hall, April 19, 1933.