PROMISE UNFULFILLED

Evening Star, Issue 25032, 26 November 1943, Page 5

PROMISE UNFULFILLED

LABOURERS' FEDERATION COMPLAINT v DEPARTMENTAL INACTION RESENTED

(P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Nov. 25. " We can only express the opinion that it is more difficult to negotiate with a Government department thai), it is with the most hidebound employer," stated the annual report presented to the conference of the New :Zealand Labourers' Federation, in Christchurch to-day. This part of the report referred to negotiations with the Department of Agriculture on the wages and conditions of vegetable produce workers.

" It appears that the department is just holding this federation and the Government up to ridicule," said the report, which mentioned that the negotiations had still not beeu completed after 18 mouths. "The Prime Minister, when the Commercial Growers Registration Bill was before Parliament, gave an assurance that workers producing vegetables would be assisted, and that vegetables would not be produced under sweated labour conditions. This promise has not been kept. The matter appears to be everybody's business and nobody's business, and it appears that direct instructions have not been given to the department to make an agreement in accordance .'-with the wishes of the Government." The report contended that the conditions offered by the department were much below those for land girls. Workers were being drafted to work under vegetable production schemes at wages and conditions arbitrarily decided by the department itself.