FARMERS’ TROUBLES

Evening Star, Issue 20310, 19 October 1929, Page 12

FARMERS’ TROUBLES

THE LABOUR DIFFICULTY [Special to the ‘Stak.’l CHRISTCHURCH, October 18. Though the Prime Minister has urged farmers and other rural employers to apply to the Labour Department for any men they may require, the proprietors of private labour agencies maintain that the farmers cannot get the class of men they want at the Government employment bureau. “They only get the hangers-on there,” was the way one agent put it to-day. He also contended that the men who register at the Government employment bureau do not want farm work. “Farmers have come to mo saying that they had got a man from the Government employment bureau, but that he hadn’t stayed on the job, or something like that,” said one labour agent. The agent said that be was having a good deal of trouble in filling jobs just now. This was always the case to a certain extent at this time of the year, as many men left their ordinary farm jobs to take on shearing or other seasonal occupations that were more highly paid than routine farm work. Nevertheless, ho thought the Government’s ' offer of unemployment relief had made the position worse. He admitted that on many farm jobs the wages paid were hardly sufficient to ©nable a married man to maintain a wife and family in town at the same time. Nevertheless, there was no reason why an able-bodied young single man should be out of work at this time of the year. The trouble was that many of them did not want to leave the attractions of town life

Another agent quite agreed that farmers could not get the men they ■wanted at the Government employment bureau. He also pointed out that the Government’s officials could not Ire expected to know the kind of man to send to a country job as well'as,a private agent.