40-HOUR WEEK

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20706, 5 March 1942, Page 4

40-HOUR WEEK

CURBING WAR EFFORT FARMERS PENALISED PROTEST IN CANTERBURY (P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, this day A strong protest against the retention of the 40-hour week in the present state of the war was made by Mr. J. W. Earl at a meeting of the North Canterbury district executive of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. “The enemy is at our back door,” said Mr. Earl, “and the Government has not got the guts or the backbone to suspend the 40-hour week.” Farmers were working all hours and when their children grew up they would be ashamed to admit that they had permitted the things they were permitting in 1942, he said. Later, in a discussion on wheatgrowing, Mr. A. M. Carpenter said that while the newspapers, grain merchants, and others were pointing out the responsibility of the farmer to grow wheat, the farmers, while accepting that responsibility, reserved’ the right to “point out certain facts.”

The farmers worked, he said, with no stop-work meetings, no strikes, and no demands for more money, but when a farmer, working all hours and days, Sundays included, wanted to send his wheat to the miller, only by a great concession were a few sacks accepted on a Saturday afternoon. The 40hour week stopped that sort of thing. Of, if a farrhr’s machinery broke down on a Friday night ,it might not be repaired until Tuesday morning because overtime work was too expensive to pay for outside the 40-hour week. While the farmer wanted labour, the placement office was broadcasting appeals, giving the conditions of employment, for forestry workers. Farmers were placed at a disadvantage by all this. Could not the 40-hour week be waived? Could not forestry work wait a while and, above all, could not wheat-growing be declared an essential industry? The discussion ended when a resolution was carried that farm machinery experts and service men be classified as essential key men. Members said they wanted the resolution to imply that the industry be treated as essential.