DAIRY FACTORY WORK.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 10, 22 December 1932, Page 6

DAIRY FACTORY WORK.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —We all sympathise with “Dairy Farmer” having to work such long hours etc., but when a man wants sympathy he should pick on a subject which has some foundations. In the first place how many dairy-farmers who have bought their farms at reasonable and payable prices are squ aling? Even at ninepence per lb. of butterfat, the pre-war farmer is still able to get time meals a day, and able to get to the sale in “old Lizzie” and on an average one day a week in toun “1/al-y Farmer” cannot p.ca on the poor slave in the fact lies liecause h. siuwed bad judgment in getting a copy of a mortgage on a piece of land. Let me state a case of th so-called overpaid employees of a factory not 100 miles from Hastings. The men start at four o’clock (not six o’clock when most dairy-farmers are having a cup of tea) and if lucky they get away at six o’clock at night. Seven days a week. Let anybody work this out it is something under the large sum of ninepence per hour. TAe, they get an hour for lunch.

Has not “Dairy Farmer” heard anything about cut- ; n wages? Well, if fie has not, iff" cannot nave seen a paper for the lubt two years. There has been a reduction of 20 per cent., plus on, shilling in file pound tax, so how can the employees be getting the same wage as when "Dairy Farmer” was getting a halfcrown per lb. butterfat? If “Dairy Farmer” went thoroughly into figures about what he would receive in a year by making these overpaid slaves work for say £1 a week less, he would find out he would perhaps benefit to the large sum of 5/or thereabouts per year Yet he would make a dozen or more families suffer more starvation to get that large amount.

As for hard work on a farm, let “Dairy Farmer” have a season at a factory, either cheese or butter, and he will find out there is no lying on the sofa if he is not in the “pink” or a httle nap after lunch. He would find it was a case of working in the damp and stuffy atmosphere all day. The best way to learn is to change places with a factory employee for a week and thereby get more information on the subject. No, the trouble is that most dairyfarmers have been pampered too long and the sooner force is brought on th. Government to make them pay the rents and mortgages when due the better it will be for the country as a whole It is only by so doing that the man who actually owns the land will b< able to make it pay.—Yours etc., FAIR GO. Hastings. 21/12/32. (Other correspondence will be found on page 9.) i