Unemployment Matters

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 69, 15 December 1931, Page 11

Unemployment Matters

Commenting on the report of the Citizens’ Unemployment Committee published in “The Dominion” of December 9. Mr P M. Butler, secretary of the General Labourers’ Union, writes: —‘ The captions on the report gave the impression that the Wainui tunnel was made a rebel job. which it is not. A letter was receiv cd bv the committee stating that the.Un employment Board had given some, assist anc» (not specified) to the work in con nection with this tunnel, and there was no suggestion that the work should be de clared a relief job. Commenting on this I stated: ‘lt is disgraceful that subsidies should be given to work of this nature •then 23.000 men are threatened, with having no relief at all before Christmas and when we apply for relief we are toll, that the Unemployment Board cannot fine the money, vet they have money to subsidise work of this description. It is enough to make any decent man shed tears of blood.’ My remarks were not lamentations, but merely a protest publicly made against what I consider to.be discrimination in the method of granting relief to the unemployed men. . “On another page, dealing with the same meeting, you report Mr. M. S. Galloway as referring to slackness on some of the relief jobs. You also report Mr F. Cornwell in the same connection, thus giving the impression that any comment made at the meeting was in the direction of sustaining the inference that the reliel workers were slacking on the job. When this particular matter was under discus sion. I made the following statement ‘Captain Galloway and his Worship the Mayor may have had their attention drawn to exceptional cases of slackness on relief works, but I can assure this committee that I have been on nearly every job in Wellington, and have conversed with the engineers and with the foremen, who have assured me that the majority of the men are good workers.’...”