UNEMPLOYMENT AND PARTY POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 126, 30 May 1928, Page 8

UNEMPLOYMENT AND PARTY POLITICS

(To the Editor.) - Sir,—The Labour Party advocates are great on sensational stunts. Their latest in this direction is on the unemployment .question., What is most striking about the speeches of Messrs. Semple, Roberts, M'Keen, Bromley, and Fraser, is the air of' "we are holier than tliou" which they adopt. The Government, the Mayor, 'the City Council, the citizens who contributed funds (named charity)—all are wrong. Only the Labour Party is any good. They are the only people who have a regard for "flesh and blood." ' Such is the attitude of these party politicians. If "self praise is no recommendation" then readers of the Press may be excused in thinking that the individuals here named are rather overlaying the ■unemployment issue with their own party and personal interests. They display such a lack of even common fairness in their several tirades that their efforts may do more liarm than good to the genuine unemployed. i People are: apt to think' in reading some of their comments that the whole question of the unemployed is simply a. stunt of these self-interested party leaders and that, it should not be taken at all seriously. Mr. 11. Semple has fulminated against the Government'beyond all reason by declaring that it has deliberately created the conditions of unemployment. This is utter nonsense. No Government would consciously create a trouble which must inevitably cause it much embarrassment and he might as well charge the Labour Party Governments in Australia with deliberately creating the unemployment which exists there as the New Zealand Government for what we find Mere. Such utter rubbish is its own condemnation. Then on the question of relief' wages the exaggeration being voiced is very misleading. It is being stated that, the payment of less than full award wage rates is in order to try and reduce wages generally. There is absolutely no ground for such a charge. The party might as well declare that when the - Arbitration Court makes provision in awards for payment of less than the award rafe by way of "under-rate permits" that it is seeking to lower wages all round. The- fact is being ignored that the Arbitration Court in order to meet the circimistances of unfortunate workers who cannot do a full amount of work provided for payment of wages at lower than the full award rates. The principle is just the same when ,the Government puts in hand, work for "relief purposes,' work it would not otherwise have done. It has to employ some men who are not qualified for the work, and it pays an under-rate. The wage is not a permanent one, but given solely to tide the individuals over a period'of extreme difficulty. •We remember a time in Wellington when on relief works the rates paid were 3s 6d per day to single men and 4s 6d to married men. Mr. E. J. Seddon was ■ then the Primd Minister. Nobody raised the, cry that he, or his Government, was seeking to reduce wages in general. The payment of such low rates did not have this general effect, and neither will the relief rates'now paid have such effect. Oir the relief works some are being-paid less, than their value, but others again are being paid more .than their work is worth, in plain truth they are not fit for tho work at all. As a city councillor, Mr. i Semple might answer the question if only full rates are to be paid is the council to employ some who are not lit for the work? ' ■ The council last year employed both classes and fixed a fair rate all round. No complaints were heard from the. men themselves. It is all very good for the Labour Party advocates, who are not carrying the responsibility, to cry out pay full wages to all whether fit or unfit, but the Government has to think of the, Dominion ns a whole,. and the Mayor of the entire city not merely of one class. It is not playing the .game for the Labour Party to be raising the quibbles and false charges which it is voicing over the unemployment situation. The party game will be played, but to use the unemployed for their' own- political ends is a practice which must fail to recommend any party.—Wo are, etc., N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE.