EFFECT OF WAGE INCREASE

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25445, 17 March 1948, Page 3

EFFECT OF WAGE INCREASE

“NO NET GAIN TO EMPLOYE!S”

GREATER PRODUCTION ADVOCATED

“The Press” Special Service DUNEDIN, March 16. Another general wage increase would mean another twist to the spiral of wages and prices without more than a passing gain to anyone, and it would be followed by worse inflation. This opinion was expressed this evening Uy Mr Haskell Anderson, president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, in his address to the .annual conference of the chambers.

Employers believed in high wages because without them they could not

sell their goods, he said, but employers, could not forget that wages, taxation, form-filling, and transport charges were costs in production, services,, and distribution. If there wa§ a general wage, increase of £1 a week the employee would receive no net gain. It would further increase inflation, reduce the value of savings, increase the national pensions bill and Government departmental costs, and increase taxes. \

Two ways of increasing th 6 value of existing wage rates were suggested by Mr Anderson. To the first —that everyone should work harder and produce more—class propagandists would probably raise again the sabotaging cry that employees should not work harder to enrich the boss, he said. “If the worker will turn his back on the Communist agitators who are assuming an increasingly dangerous role in this country, and do some figuring for himself he will soon realise that hot merely an advance in his living standard but actually the retention of his present standard depends very substantially on his own increased output,” said Mr Anderson. The second suggested way of .increasing real wages was a reduction of taxes. The amount of taxes taken from the product of industry was insupportable, he said. Competition among employers by offering special inducements to workers was condemned by Mr Anderson. “Some of our people are playing with Capitalism and Socialism at the same time,” he said. “It is destroying the whole wage structure. If our employers continue to follow this practice they must accept responsibility for a breakdown of the industrial conciliation and arbitration system. This competition is causing inflation, and has contributed to the increased cost of goods.”