RELIEF WORKERS’ STRIKE.

Evening Star, Issue 21628, 25 January 1934, Page 12

RELIEF WORKERS’ STRIKE.

TO THE EDITOR,

Sir, —It is evident that. an attempt is being made to prejudice the employed against the relief worker in his present move to gain • the means whereby he can live and not just exist. Certain folks whose stomachs are well lined by good meals, and whose backs are well clad, are making this attempt to get us to regard the relief worker as a somewhat “ sad, mad, glad, bad phenomenon, a careless, idle unemployable. It seems to be necessary, therefore, to remind ourselves who the relief worker really is. Is he not the one-time fully qualified and wellbehaved carpenter, engineer, commercial traveller, school teacher, etc. ? There must be a reason for his seeming ungratefulness and resentment to the established order of things. There is, and it is contained and expressed in the utter hopelessness of ever turning that elusive corner. But Mr Jessep, retired farmer, who, by the way, is in receipt of a salary of £4OO a year, with travelling allowance of £2 a day, from the Unemployment Board, must think it is pure cussedness on the part of the. relief worker to demand what this country can very easily give him, a decent living like that, he, Mr Jessep, is enjoying. Mr Jessep shows great concern for those dairy farmers and other agricultural workers now in receipt of less than the unemployed. _ We must admit that there are many in the most pitiable plight of being in no better condition than relief workers. But we would point out that it is an old dodge in subversive propaganda to set the interests of one set of the community against another while the exploiters of the mass of the people get away with the swag. It is also a cunning move of the propagandist of Mr Jessep’s calibre to obscure facts that may tell in’favour of those he adversely criticises and condemns. In the present effort he obscures (1) that the. unemployed are engaged on useful and necessary work; C2) the unemployed contribute out of their meagre doles no mean sum to the Unemployment Fund; (3) members of their families, even to the newsboy, are stung by the tax; (4) a fa ? slice of the fund has gone in subsidies towards the costs of erecting buildings for already wealthy corporations, companies, and individuals; (5) many farmers of the well-to-do lot are having their fencing renewed and their lands cleared of blackberries, gorse, and rabbits at the expense of the fund; (6) £42,700 came out of the fund for special’’allowance to police officers; (7) board members drew in fees, salaries, travelling allowances, and expenses £4,377 3s Bd, while other salaries totalled £15,643 Os lid and £60,776 10s 4d was taken by the Government for services rendered by other departments; (8) the Government was able at the end of the financial year ] 9.33 to show a balance on the credit side of the fund of £424,426 5s sd. It is quite true, as Mr Jessep affirms, that “ many contributors to the fund toil from daylight till dark for less than £3 a Week,” and further on, after he has delivered himself of a slur on the human nature of the spokesmen of the relief workers, he states that “ their neighbours—the donors —were in very many cases hard-pressed to find their present contributions, while the general public had shown a generous willingness to contribute by way of direct taxation, over £4,000,000 a year towards the support of their unemployed neighbours. It was hardly likely that they would favour the idea of keeping up that rate of payment indefinitely.” I should think not, t nor is their any need for them to continue to do so, provided the Government would take over the money monopoly and alter the financial policy so as to make it work in the best

interests of the whole people. Mr Jessep has made a statement to the effect that 300 relief workers are at present working in Gisborne. This statement has appeared before, and that, just after the strike was declared.’ What he says may be true of Poverty Bay in general, but is not so in regard to Gisborne proper, if we are to believe the Gisborne ‘Herald’ of January 15, which states that 750 men are out. This paper further remarks that “900 men, women, and children have been fed by the strike committee. . . . It is felt in Gisborne that if the strike here continues as an isolated protest against the Unemployment _ Board’s policy, it will not have failed if it can be shown that public sympathy has enabled the strikers and their to subsist for a period without the assistance of the board.” I would recommend that last sentence or two to those who have been lending an ear to Mr Jessep’s wail about the poor taxpayers. It is evident now on every hand that an increasing number of taxpayers _ are beginning to recognise that their interests are bound up with those of relief workers, and that Government, through its prime iniquity of the Unemployment Act, is exploiting their sympathy. What we are really offering them is an inefficient and insane financial policy.—l am, etc., John Gilchkist. January 25.