BASIC WAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 3 January 1927, Page 8

BASIC WAGE

NEW SOUTH WALES DECISION

SHOCK FOR LABOUR.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, 22nd December.

While there is a proposal for child endowment, which, incidentally,- can only bo translated into substantial^act by legislation, the decision of the New South Wales Standard of LhSug Cornmisswn not to increase the basic wago tor male employees, has swept the Labour movement like a bombshell. The feeling is that what little popularity the Government at present enjoys, following, the recent crisis, will now seriously diminish, and that while the Government is in no way responsible for the basic wage remaining as it is, the decision will. inevitably recoil on it 11ns, incidentally, is the first fruits of a Commission which is of the Labour Government's own'creation/ If it gives many-.decisions like this, Labour will be inclined to regard the Commission as Us Frankenstein. The decision came upon the Trades Hall like an avalanche. Union secretaries were staggered. They had been looking forward to, just us the employers had been fearing, an increase of anything from 7s to 10s in the basic wage. The effect will probably be that those unions which dropped the. Federal jurisdiction to come under that of the State will now be anxious to get back,, seeing that the Federal.wage is 10s or lls above that of the State. The chilcl endowment proposal,, however, may soften the blow somewhat. The. fact remains that Mr. A. B. Piddington, the chairman of the Commission, is not nearly as popular today in the Labour movement as he was a day or two ago. Ho seems likely, at the moment, t.o get more bricks than bouquets. ' •'■..■"■ • ' ■ .- Aoiidst. all. the hullabaloo over the basic wage decision,; the extraordinary story of one of the union secretaries got so little space in the papers as to. pass almost, unnoticed. ■ This official was among the negligible minority-at. the Trades Hall courageous enough to express the conviction that, even if the workers had been granted a few extra shillings, they would, on the old principle of the vicious^eircle, have had to pay'it out again in increased prices of food. In speaking of the effect of increased prices upon workers : with families, he cited the case, of "a Sydney tram-driver, a personal friend of his.' The train-driver, it appears, has no fewer 'than 17 children. He buys more than half-a-dozen loaves of bread a day to feed thenij and averages about' one pair of boots a week to shod them. He buys two pounds of butter a day, eked out with; dripping. .VrWhen,". added the union secretary, "pennies and halfpennies are put oh to meat and butter, bread and bbots, and other com : modities and articles, it means a thundering lot to a man with a family like that of my friend, with his 17 children." ■'•. ■■„...- "„■■ . .' ' . Mingled with consternation in Labour circles at the- basic, .wage decision is the very pronbuneed%feelirig' that if workers with families. are to 'benefit by the child-endowment they shouldbe given the benefit now instead of having to. cling to the shadowy hope of a child endowment scheme which will have to be introduced into and pass Parliament, at a critical period in the life of the Government when anything might happen to it. The Treasury is greatly re-.; lieved by the decision.. It will riot, now have to find the additional revenue, totalling more than £.1,000,000, which an increase in the basic wage in the public services would have- involved.