FOURTEEN SHILLINGS A DAY

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 135, 5 December 1930, Page 8

FOURTEEN SHILLINGS A DAY

* In its first scheme for the relief of unemployment the Unemployment Board has maintained the wage rate of 14s a day. Several local bodies have taken strong exception to this and are refusing to co-operate with the Board on such terms. Their stand is, we think, ill-advised, though the principle is sound. When the Reform Government was being roundly criticised for refusing to p.ay standard wages on relief works we supported its decision, holding that the lower rate was justified by the emergency quality of the.work and the necessity for making some difference in the wage so that relief workers would not be tempted to regard relief work as a permanency. The United Government raised the rate, and has since maintained it. Now the major responsibility for unemployment organisation has been transferred to the Board. But it would riot be fair to expect the Board to grapple with this very difficult ■ issue before it has had time to study the problem in all its bearings. The immediate task confronting the Board was the preparation of relief schemes to tide the unemployed over Christmas. These were essentially temporary, and could not be regarded as embodying the permanent policy to be adopted in the future. The Board had to do something quickly, and that alone was%a sufficient excuse for its failure to decide big issues at once. At the same time the Unemployment Board cannot ignore the objections that have been raised to the 14s a day. When it comes to decide the permanent policy it must meet these objections. Labour, for political reasons in part, has made so much of an outcry regarding the 12s and 9s paid by the Reform Government that reversion to those rates is sure to raise a storm of protest. The best way to deal with the difficulty thus created is to have the whole subject fully and frankly discussed. The Government might have given a lead; but it feared to do so. It passed the problem over to the Unemployment Board. If the Board does not face it there will be further obstruction of relief schemes by non-co-operation. Only by bringing all parties together can this be obviated. Sir Apirana Ngata said the other day that conferences led nowhere and were therefore useless. We cannot agree. Conferences may often clear the air, and prepare the way for acceptance of a decision when a similar decision, emanating from a committee or board, would be greeted with opposition. An economic conference is to be summoned by the Associated -Chamber! of Commerce. ■• This is good as far as it goes; but it does not go far enough. There must be an opportunity for free exchange of views with representatives of the workers. If such an opportunity were given all aspects of relief work schemes could be reviewed. Assurances could be given that the lower rate of pay would not be operated in such a way as to be a lever for the reduction, of standard rates. That

is a separate problem, and must be dealt with separately. But we believe that the 14s a day is now an obstacle to full co-operation in relief schemes. Many workers and many farmers are not now earning 14s a day regularly, and they cannot be expected to support plans which appear to them to place • relief workers on a more favourable footiner.