UNEMPLOYED AND FARM PAY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 86, 11 April 1935, Page 8

UNEMPLOYED AND FARM PAY

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—ln the recent debate on unemployed pay in the House of Representatives when the Labour Party moved for an increase of 10s per day, the Minister of Employment stated that the funds in hand would not stand the increase. Ido not think for one minute that this is the real reason. The reason was disclosed by Mr. Bromley at a Rotary meeting, when he said that to make relief work pay too attractive would have a tendency to draw farm labourers from the country. The Government's policy is to keep 150,000 unemployed on low pay so that the farmers may have plenty of cheap labour. This policy is going to hit back very hard on the farmers. The British Government fixed the farm hands' wage in England so as to attract the unemployed to the land and to help the farmer pay the fixed wage the Government is giving him all assistance. The British farmers are well aware that the primary produce from New Zealand is produced with very cheap labour costs, and that will be one of their main reasons for quotas, which will come as they cannot reduce their labour cost.,

If the farm worker's wage in New Zealand is so close to relief pay that an increase to the unemployed will attract men from the farm, why cannot the Government fix the farm worker's wage at a reasonable rate as the British Government has done? A fair wage on a farm would have the effect of attracting relief workers, who are today denied the right to exist.— I am, etc.,

BRITISH TO THE BACKBONE,