Farm Workers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 10

Farm Workers

Sir, —Like Mr Davison, I don’t know the exact existing rates for English farm workers, but think they are 5s an hour. On this basis he would, with overtime and double time, receive somewhere about £2O for the 60 hours worked weekly in this district If Mr Davison would be prepared to pay his workers the £6 to £7 weekly in preference to their perks this would bring them on a pah with the English worker. The landowner supplies their cottages, which must conform to the County Housing Act, and maintain them. The cottage provided for my last job here would have been condemned. How do Mr Searle’s and “B.S.A.’s” hourly rates and conditions compare with the organised freezing workers? If conditions are as good as they state, no farmer would oppose a union.—Yours, etc, , D. R. BLEWETT. June 17, 1964.

Sir,—Perhaps there are none more despised in our society than those who take the benefits but repudiate the responsibilities of collective bargaining. Mr A. D. Searle and “8.5. A. probably do not realise the chaotic conditions that would result if every worker sold his labour by individual arrangement, and every farmer and turer sold his product by

private treaty; people of that sort seldom carry their thoughts to a logical conclusion. It is most desirable for this country to aim for an. annual percentage increase in primary production; and that problem can be solved only by collective thought and collective action. Even looselyknit sections of the community, such as farm workers, should’ be encouraged and permitted to speak with one voice, either in the Arbitration Court or elsewhere. There are problems peculiar to rural wage-earners outside the consideration of those who never encounter such problems.—Yours, etc., D. ROBERTSON. June 17, 1964. [This correspondence may now , cease. Ed., "The Press.”]