CARPENTERS GIVE SUPPORT

Hawera Star, Volume L, 10 January 1931, Page 7

CARPENTERS GIVE SUPPORT

ARBITRATION 'COURT WORKINGS.

DEMAND FOR RETENTION

An emphatic protest against any proposed abolition of the Arbitration Court, and against any proposals which, might mutilate Its workings, was made at a meeting of the Wellington City branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners held on Monday. The meeting also discussed unemployment .and carried a resolution requesting the Government to take steps to restrict rents, interest, dividends, and profits to what “is fair and reasonable and in parity with Stock Exchange values, .on such lines as shall prevent the undue exploitation of the wealth of the Dominion. ’ ’ A resolution was carried expressing the meeting ’s utter want .of confidence in the Unemployment Art, and in its administration.

The resolution stated: “This Act is misleading in its pretensions, in as much as n is not an insurance, but merely a dole, distributed at the whim of flic board. The Unemployment Act is the most inequitable Act, and the most one-sided Act ever placed on the Statute Book. It levies the same toll on the man on £1 a week as it. does on the mail with £20,000' a year. It is not only un-Cliristian-like, but inhun.anitarian, in that it demands the levy from the unemployed, "utterly regardless of the fact that they may not possess the means whereby to provide common sustenance. It is un-Christian-like, and uiihuinamtarian in its administration, in that it is more concerned with the protection of the ‘haves’ than it is in relieving the ■wants of the ‘have-nots.’ Wo therefore ask the Government to amend the Act, so as to make it an insurance against unemployment; that the levy be made upon the .basis of earned income, and so give the unemployed a greater mode of equity than they now obtain; also, that, the fund he administered solely for the relief of those unemployed, and not as a subsidy for the benefit of those much hotter off than the unemployed. ’ ’