MANY IDLE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 46, 6 February 1928, Page 7

MANY IDLE

AUCKLAND’S UNEMPLOYED. A GLOOMY FORECAST. With the Mayor’s unemployment fund nearing exhaustion, and the consequent cessation of operations on all relief works, with the exception of the Western Spring development scheme and the War Memorial Museum undertaking, prospects for Auckland’s army of workless are particularly dismal (states an exchange). Little work of any description is offering and official figures specially compiled at the Trades Hall disclose that in Auckland district alone there are .‘1836 organised workers idle. Including unorganised labour, particularly women and girls, warehouse employees. clerks, etc., it is estimated that in the city alone there are 5000 unemployed at present. Though conditions in New Zealand arc acute, to put it mildly, the position is likely to be accentuated if the prediction of one Labour man approached yesterday, that Australia’s surplus unemployed will flock to the Dominion during the coming winter, is correct. Already the drift has commenced, and only on Monday he had to turn away disheartened two skilled workers, who had come from Sydney in search of employment, “industrially conditions in New’ Zealand will be deplorable during the coming winter, but 1 fear they will be worse in Australia,” was his conviction. A .suggestion advanced as a probable solution of the Dominion’s unemployment problems was that the Government should employ the proceeds derived from the petrol tax on a comprehensive reading scheme. An annual collection of something like £900.000 could be used as security for <hc loan required to carry on the work. A good road from the Cape to the Bluff would have its reflection on rateable values, assist in the development of hackblocks, make its possible to make deteriorated lands reproductive, and last, but not least, absorb the country’s army of unemployed.