FARMERS' UNION & AWARDS

Evening Post, Volume CCXV, Issue 13, 17 January 1938, Page 8

FARMERS' UNION & AWARDS

(To tlio Editor.)

Sir,—ln making reference to the Dairy Factory and Slaughtermen's! awards the New Zealand Farmers' Union seemed to have overlooked the fact that in fixing these awards the Arbitration Court has, consciously or unconsciously, restored to the employees in these industries a part of what wus taken from them in 3933 when the exchange value of their wages was reduced by 20 per cent. The Government, on the other hand, by fixing and paying a standard price for dairy produce in New Zealand devalued currency Has unconsciously reduced the exchange value of the farmers' income, while the Arbitration Court has increased his costs. The farmer, therefore, has manoeuvred himself into a position that he has been caught in the trap set to catch the community at large in 1933, and unless the real exchange value of his product is increased,. he will bo left without a feather to fly with.

The awards recognise the fact that the dairy employee, slaughterman, waterside worker, and many others outside the actual farmers, are impdrtant units in the export trade, and therefore have some claim to a just share of the income derived from the industry. New Zealand having abandoned the sterling exchange standard upon which her economic structure over the best part of a century was built, and adopted the new Australian exchange standard, is heading for an ever-increasing cost of production and inflation in all industry that will ultimately end in national disaster.

It should tie recognised that while England's prosperity above all else is due to the high exchange value of the sterling pound, New Zealand's difficulties are due, above all else, to the artificially low exchange value of the New Zealand pound, and there is only one solution to this problem, the restoration of the value of the New Zealand pound to sterling parity value. —I am, etc.,

J. HISLOP.