RELIEF PAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 18, 22 January 1937, Page 11

RELIEF PAY

MEN ON NO. 5 SCHEME

DEPUTATION TO MINISTER

A deputation from Wellington relief workers will shortly wait on the Minister of Labour (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong) to protest against the rates of pay for men on the No. 5 scheme.

An official of the Relief Workers' Association stated today that recently there had been a reduction in the allowances paid to men on the No. 5 scheme. In the past, men -had been allowed to earn up to an average of £3 per week over six-monthly periods, and "lean" times over the previous six months had been allowed for. Now a rigorous reduction was being made of every penny earned in excess of £3, every eight weeks. A strange anomaly was that a married man with no family was allowed to earn £8 12s every eight weeks ill addition to his relief pay, while a married man with, say, three children, might not earn more than £4 10s without suffering reduction corresponding to the excess earned. One result of the eightweekly survey was that a number of men who had been unable to save anything from their total earnings, owing to the pressing necessity of replacing common-place household effects that they have had to do without over long periods, were compelled to try to make ends ijieet for the next eight weeks on a weekly working allowahce equal to only a little more than half the normal sustenance allowance. It was stated by "The Post's" informant that during the holiday period relief workers had in many cases been working for their small additional earnings beside regular Government and City Council employees who had been adding to their holiday wages, on the wharves and elsewhere, and who, although they had been receiving a total pay as much as double that of any relief worker, were in no way penalised.