ARBITRATION AWARDS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 83, 9 April 1931, Page 10

ARBITRATION AWARDS

I (Associated Chambers of Commerce.) The wage reduction measures included in the Government's Finance Bill will, when brought into effect, give prompt and welcome relief to a great number of businesses which under the present conditions are barely able to carry on. Though opponents of wage reduction pretend to believe the contrary, those who will receive a large share of the benefit include the primary producers, the hardest pressed section of the community. Their direct expenditure upon wages is. not impressively large, but they help indirectly to pay a very large share. The cost of everything they buy is affected by the wages paid to those who make or handle it. The' wage-standard of the country affects also the farmer's return from everything lie sells; for while the nominal price he receives is, in general, fixed out-, side New Zealand, he has to pay transport and handling and merchandising charges that are regulated by the local wages. A wage scale which has, through economic changes, become extravagant, is . thus shown as a definite handicap to production, whereajs wages can only be maintained if production is stimulated. Even more important than wages is the fabric of conditions and restrictions with which awards have hampered. almost every form of industry in the country. Unnecessarily strict lines of demarcation between trades apprenticeship conditions,' ironclad rules about hours of work, and many other restrictions place manufacturers under a handicap which makes it impossible for them to compete in the market against the products of less hampered manufacturers abroad. Many of the conditions imposed upon industry, moreover, may be tolerable enough for those who are in business in a large scale, but impose impossibly large overhead costs upon smaller yet equally worthy concerns. These are broad facts which have only to be pointed out to meet with the approval of moderate and sensible Labour leaders who, notwithstanding the official opposition of the Labour Party, may be relied upon to recognise the imperative need for a review and .readjustment of Arbitration