WORK ON FARMS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 143, 14 December 1933, Page 11

WORK ON FARMS

THE CO-OPERATIVE SYSTEM

INEFFECTIVE PROTEST

(Special to the "Evening Post.") MASTERTON, This Day. Under instructions from his executive, the provincial secretary oi the Wairarapa Farmers' Union (Mr. James Watson) wrote recently to the Unemployment Board stating that it was considered that the supersession of tho 4B contract scheme by a co-operative scheme would adversely affect both the farmer and the relief worker. The Commissioner of Unemployment (Mr. G. C. Godfrey) has replied that no change can be made in the board's decision. In his letter >Mr. Watson stated that the contractor acted as an essential person in control'and that in the absence of a contractor a group of cooperative workers, who might come and go, had not the necessary backing to provide tools and equipment. The farmer also was left without control or checking of the amount of work done, and was thereforo without proper means of, assessing progress payments or payments duo to workers leaving the job. Tho co-operative system was considered on other grounds cumbersome and unworkable, and the executive was ot opinion that its enforcement would make more difficult the absorption of unemployed in farming districts during the winter. It therefore urged that' a contractor be still allowed to engage the requisite number of unemployed men to undertake work under the 4B scheme. • In reply to the protest, the Commissioner of Unemployment wrote: "I have to advise that the Wairarapa dis- , trict is the only one in which the non-co-operative system has been allowed to operate; in all other districts, satisfactory work has been obtained on a co-operative basis; and in view of this, I have to advise that novariation of the board's decision can be allowed. " = : ' ,