EARNING AND SPENDING: THE WORKMAN’S BUDGET

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25246, 26 July 1947, Page 8

EARNING AND SPENDING: THE WORKMAN’S BUDGET

PAY ENVELOPE

(Specially Written for “The Press.”) [By M.O.]

I have spent the last six months working as a general labourer in Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland, and have seen something of the life of the community of working men in this country. It is certainly, by the standards generally applied to it. a very wealthy and economically carefree community: perhaps, indeed, as wealthy and carefree as any of its kind that ever existed. But it has some problems. The New Zealand worker, employed indoors or out, in white collar or in overalls, earns for a 40-hour w’eek on work not dangerous or obnoxious about £6, clear of tax. more or less. The more or less amounts to about 15s at the very outside. How narrow these limits are, upper and lower, it surprised me to find. Dirt, danger, or water can substantially increase a man’s earnings on a job. His skill will do much less for him. A carpenter once remarked to me, “My brother went to work as a labourer when he left school. I was apprenticed to my trade for five years; and by that time my brother had earned £lOOO more than I had. It's going to take me a long time to make that up at seven or eight bob a week extra.” When I agreed with him wholeheartedly that skill should be worth a lot more he seemed surprised. He could not get anyone to see it. It was, indeed, a heresy in trade union circles. The skilled man, it seems, is content with this: that he does not have to work so “hard” as the labourer, who attends him and does his heavy carrying. The 40-Hotir Week: Theory and Fact The really big and regular additions to the weekly pay come, of course, from overtime. If not among whitecollar city workers, at least among such men as labourers, carpenters, bricklayers, and factory workers, overtime is so common that the New Zealand worker’s advance is to be seen, not in a 40-hour week, but in the large increase in his pay for a 47|-hour week. I mention this figure because it represents the number of hours very frequently worked. The working man dislikes sacrificing his Saturday. He gets his extra time in by doing a nine and a half hour day, beginning at 7.30, taking half an hour for lunch, and knocking off at 5.30. Some jobs work the eight hours during the day and three after tea, with Friday night off, making 12 hours overtime. But 45 to 48 hours a week is generally regarded as enough, both by the men and by those who have to come and supervise them. This brings in between £7 and £B, which is what the worker feels he needs.

He regrets that “We can’t stick to the 40-hour week. We should, but you couldn’t live on it.” The 40-hour week was one of the more idealistic aims of the worker. Associated in New Zealand with the names of leaders ' highly trusted and respected in the Labour movement, it is itself regarded with respect as the means of bringing to the worker what he does in fact need most—leisure. For there is no doubt about it—and this is not only my own opinion but that of others I have mst with experience to judge—heavy manual work leavesone with less energy to devote to recreation than, say, office work, however irritating and trying that may be. Take it, then, that the working man wants, and through overtime generally manages to get, between £7 and £8 a week. Since industry of all kinds is more active at present in the North Island than the South, and the shortage of labour more acute, the theory and practice of using overtime as a wage-regulator may be better exemplified in the North; but the difference is only one of degree. If a man is ambitious for more, he can generally earn it in the week-end. Saturday morning work, worth about 18s, is common; all day Saturday, worth about £2, fairly so. Sunday work, where it is done, is kept to a minimum and usually confined to specially necessary jobs for experienced men. But even I, inexperienced as I am, have been engaged for 10 hours on Saturday and 10 on Sunday for £6, clear of tax. Real wages, where labour is short, as in Auckland, are sometimes increased by free board on the job. All things considered, this is worth nearly £3; and I have seen it offered on a job three-quarters of a mile from the bus stop, 15 miles from the city. The men on this job generally spared themselves the uphill walk to the bus and- took a taxi to town. That cost 275.

The white-collar city worker’s job does not offer him this profitable overtime. His wages for a 40-hour week, as I have said, will be about the same as the manual worker’s. Well, he does and must, organise his life with greater skill, and far more thriftily. His way of life and the nature of his work, which leaves him less exhausted at the end of the day, make it easier for him to do so. His luxuries are fewer —his taxis, his bets on the races his beers —or he cuts them out. He may go oftener to the pictures and other entertainments, but they are comparatively cheap. His clothes are dearer, but he keeps them longer. And, especially if he is in contact with trade, he will generally be able to spend his money with a keener eye to value. Value. The very word is like « knell, bringing me to the unsatisfactory picture I must present in the second part of this article. I have tried to show what are the resources of the New Zealand worker; now I shall say something about what he can get for his money. I was told eight years ago by a person no less competent to judge than a young member of the English Rothschild family that New Zealand was, without exception, the most expensive country in the world. This may well be so. What concerns me more at present is that in the field of prices and values chaos reigns. I am not'referring to the prices of foodstuff which are held steady and which everybody knows, but to those of things that have more directly concerned me—clothing and footwear and accommodation, meals away from home, and various services for the working man. When I came back to Christchurch from the North Island I made what I considered a rather startling remark to a man who had been all his life in the retail business, many years in England and more than 25 years here: “I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no relation between the prices and values of goods in this country.” “No,” be said, not at all startled. «i have an article for which the Price Tribunal price is 455. At present-day values it is worth abput 355. I can't sell -it at that price because I paid more than that for it. And I have another article of the same kind for 25s which will wear better. What does the Price Tribunal know about values?” The Ups and Downs of Value Nothing, of course. That is not really its concern. Representations are made about costs and other relevant matters and it fixes what it considers to be a fair price. But costs, especially at present, vary for many reasons. Some manufacturers may be fortunate enough to secure supplies of materials. They may have greater facilities for keeping down costs. But the same manufacturer may one week turn out an article of reasonable value and next week one priced absurdly high. His costs, for some reason or another, have varied. The working man and his wife wonder why a trader they have dealt with and regarded as a personal friend for years will suddenly sell them something at a high price that proves to be very poor value indeed, and why they can get the equivalent or better somewhere else for two-thirds of the price. I bought a sports coat for about £6; a friend got a ready-made suit of similar material for the same price. It was very well cut and made. The price, as he remarked, was about what he would have paid at the west period of the slump. In travelling about one finds that the best value is often provided by Government services, for here nothing has been changed for many years. Railway travel, meals in railway restaurants, and telephone services are examples of good value to-day Accommodation of the type required by a working man and ordinary restaurant meals are things in which one just has to trust to luck. And one finds out by experience. I am not blaming the Price Tribunal Without it prices would probably have soared higher, though they might have been more consistent. However, what should be mainly kept in mind 'by working men is that this is a very §°pd time to lay a foundation for comfort and security. Money is plentiful; and if a man looks about carefully before he spends, the cost of living may not be so high as it appears and certainly not so high as the plunging- spender must find it.