The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, May 9, 1936. IN THE NAME OF FARMERS.

Grey River Argus, 9 May 1936, Page 6

The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, May 9, 1936. IN THE NAME OF FARMERS.

One explanation why provincial executive differ from dominion heads of the Farmers’ Union, may be the stand the latter are taking - against the Government’s Labour legislation. They yesterday issued as a Press Association telegram a condemnation of arbitration and indeed any of those improvements in the lot of the wage worker now proposed. It bears the same brand as the criticism of guaranteed prices, which has been politically put up in the farmer’s name. It is utterly a dictatorial attitude, hostile to workers not only in rural, but all industry, in regard alike to hours, wages, agreements, conditions and anything else. As a third party, the Union heads would ask the license to intervene in the making of any award, but would deny any industrial union any right to see farmers or other employers carry out their legal obligations to their employees. Arbitration, if compulsory, it is said, restricts industrial efficiency, increasing production costs, without any benefit to the workers. Who is restricted? The daylight-till-dark brigade, employers or workers! Wages with the Union heads are simply costs and nothing else. Men are machines and no more. Thus any bettering of urban industrial conditions appears to these heads as a detriment to themselves. . They say it will attract labour from them. They want a surplus, so that all the competition shall be among wage-earners, and none at all among employers. Farmers generally are ready for the dairy price guarantee. Mr. Polson and his dominion executive coterie say not, and no doubt expect the public to read into this antiLabour manifesto cut their opposition to the Government on the price guarantee issue also. But how many thousand farmers arc there not who take a broader view? Mr. Coates’has a few up in his electorate. Because farmres want a 12 hour day per season, it is no reason for lengthy hours in other industries. When the Union heads plump for piecework, they show their hand. They want the sort of labour that can be sacked as soon

as long hours are impracticable, or seasonal work is over. They want a nomadic population, even if they pretend to lament what they call the urban drift. AVhat sort of stability could there be when farm workers thus require to be migratory? The farmer wants fullest stability for himself, but when it comes to the Court considering what living costs a farm worker, the Union heads say that is nonsense. Costs are the one and only consideration where the. farmer’s obligation to labour is concerned, so they declare, but where the- worker’s costs come up, they declare they do not count at all, but only what an employer considers he should pay. A fairer rule than that is applied to farm horses! Farmers, it is argued, ought not to have to compete for labour, but labour ought to be obliged

Io compete for farm jobs. The Union heads have welcomed their exchange subsidisation, which conies from the pockets of workers to a greater extent than those of any other class. In fact, too many farmers altogether have ignored their natural duty to farm first for their own subsistence, going instead only for profit, and reckoning as mere costs the subsistence of the human beings on whose labour they must rely. The bigger the profit-farmer the more rigid is his estimate ot/ labour as a non-human factor. Now

the 40 hour week is not to be imposed on farmers Avhom it would not suit, but the Union heads want no 40 hour week in any industry. Their stand is political as well as economic or social. They cannot complain if they are themselves regarded as labour exporters of the most rabid type. Whatever they be personally, they commend to everybody the standpoint that labour has no rights when it is a question of farmers’ profits. Guaranteed prices arc said to be going to require continually to be increased on account of increased _ wages. If the guarantee will increase the two, the Union heads say it will threaten financial stability. What about the financial stability of 70,000 farmers to-day anyway I Has it increased during the' dole period? The recent conditions advocated by the Union heads are those they have had for years, and where do those conditions land the majority of the farmers? The facts speak more convincingly than this statement of’ the dominion executive. They may circulate their jeremiad, but facts ivdl weigh more than such propaganda. with farmers and the public eenerallv. The past and the present 'tell against the . Union leaders, and all the indications are that the future will also.