PEAK IS PASSING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 18, 22 January 1944, Page 7

PEAK IS PASSING

WAR WAGE PERIOD

THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLOOK

O.C. SYDNEY, January 18. The peak period of high wages for workers in Australia has passed, and many families will need to readjust their living standards to conform with deflated incomes. In New South Wales alone it is expected that more than 25,000 men and women will find that their wages will decrease by £1 10s to £2 a week within the next four months. <. The tapering off of munitions production and the completion of many of the Allied Works Council's projects will release large numbers of workers for other avenues of employment with less attractive wages. Overtime for all but the highly skilled tradesmen is gradually being eliminated. Where staffs are being pruned, only the most skilled men and women are" being retained. Process workers, assemblers, and floor hands are being released from the munitions industry and from the heavy metals trades associated with the war effort. A paradox is that in some sections employers have applied for the right to work staffs a 56----hour week, and highly skilled tradesmen are still at a premium. The organisation of the Australasian Society of Engineers, Mr. Vincent Grogan, said that for 10 years after the war there will be a wide market and high wages for the most skilled men in the metal trades, but dilutees and workers called into the factories for the duration of the peak production programme (many on the basic wage before the war) will soon be back to the comparatively low-wage group they previously occupied. j RETIREMENT OF WOMEN. ' Nearly 15,000 women will have to leave the metals industry soon, other union leaders think. Many of them have been earning, with overtime, about £5 5s a week. New jobs to which they are man-powered (food preserving, work on the land, minor non-war factory employment) will pay from £1 to £1 10s a week less. With men who are man-powered out of the highest priority classes wages may drop as much as £2 a week. When country annexes and munitions j factories close, men now earning £7 to £9 a week with overtime will probably find themselves with incomes reduced to between £4 10s and £5 2s. [ As the Allied Works Council immediate programme /comes to an end It is expected that 4000 to 5000 men will be thrown back on to the civilian labour market.