HIGHER WAGES OR MORE?

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 135, 5 December 1933, Page 8

HIGHER WAGES OR MORE?

- '■'.'♦ — The City Council has not finally decided to restore the wages cuts. It had before it last night a report from the estimates 'committee "that nothing further could be done at present towards the restoration of the cuts, but the committee recommended that the matter should Be again considered when finances permitted." It rejected this recommendation in favour of an amendment "that it should be a recommendation to the council that the cuts should be restored , al the commencement of the financial year in April next." As the amended recommendation comes, ' however, with the endorsement of a majority of the full council (except Councillor Appleton, who is away) the estimates will have to be framed on this basis unless the council changes its mind in the meantime. There is no condition attaching to the recommendation—iio "if finances permit." Several supporters of the amendment, though not Councillors Luckie and Huggins, made it plain that it was their opinion that the finances should be made to fit higher wages, that the money should be obtained somehow. ' Unless the council has the windfall which Councillor Chapman predicted, this may mean raising the rates or reducing the staff. Whether the council can afford to restore the cuts does not, apparently, trouble the majority. The subject was considered by the estimates committee, which, we assume, considered it in the light afforded by full information as to finance. The Mayor said the council had £2000 to come and go on. Councillor Chapman held that there was much niore, but the Mayor showed him to be wrong in some specific statements. It is, therefore, a gamble on a windfall or else it involves raising more revenue. We have never accepted the view that rates are the crushing burden some people hold them to be, and mainly responsible for high rents, but in the business part of the city they are a burden, and if they are raised it will be increasingly difficult for many /small business people to carry on and employ labour. This is the flaw in the additional spending power argument used in support of higher wages. If the business ratepayer has to put his hand in his pocket so . that the council may restore the cuts he needs much more business before his own position is improved. Rates have been raised this year, except to owners who have secured a revaluation, and those who have not had a revaluation are faced with the prospect of another rise next year. The council adopted the wrong method, we think, in rejecting , the report of a committee which investigated the question in detail. But a greater error lies in the distribution of the so-called "additional spending power." If there is more money available next year it should be spent in employing more men. We do not deny that present employees on the minimum- have a small wage; ] but those who have been dismissed are worse off. and should have first consideration. Councillor Luckie said "the more that could be supplied by the council in regular wages, the less would have to be spent on relief." This would be correct if the greater amount of regular wages were devoted to employing more men. •The saving in relief by paying more to present employees will be infinitesimal. This aspect of the question should certainly have more consideration than has been given to it. The dismissed employees seem ~to Jiavb been forgotten,