UNEMPLOYED WORK

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 73, 8 March 1933, Page 9

UNEMPLOYED WORK

INCENTIVE LACKING RIVERS BOARD JOB. A letter taking exception to some recent remarks of Messrs. Lassen and Burns at the last meeting of the Hawke’s Bay Rivers Board was received at the meeting of the board yesterday. This letter, from the Hastings Registered Unemployed Workers’ Association, dealt with the comparatively slight amount of work allegedly done by unemployed on the overflow works at Brookfields. Mr. L. E. Harris moved that the letter be received. In the view of Mr. C. Lassen his remarks at the previous meeting of the board were fully justified, particularly when there were ratepayers on the one hand complaining about the quantity of dirt being shovelled and carried per day, and other ratepayers saying the men were doing little more than fooling their time away. The speaker said he thought it time for the unemployed themselves to investigate the situation. The day before the last meeting the overseer reported an output of 112 yards of soil, representing an average of 5 1-3 yards per man. The soil thrown out from the overflow was loose and sandy, and the speaker maintained that any man, working for two hours, could load that quantity of soil into trucks. He had timed the men and found that for 16 trips they took, all told, 4 hours 40 minutes. There was something wrong there, he asserted, and in fairness to the unemployed he felt the time taken by those men in pushing those trucks was the whole trouble. He had noticed, too, a veritable bombardment of dirt from one truck to another. The foremen were not doing their duty. Concerning the Hastings-Pakipaki road he thought the men were doing their work well and very differently from those working for the Rivers Board, It was clear the Rivers Board was not getting the same degree of work from the men, as was the county. Mr. L. E- Harris: We all know there is a difference between the two jobs. It is all a question of interest. It strikes those fellows as uninteresting to push those trucks full of soil. Had they been put on an interesting job, doing something good, things would have been different. It is the job, not the man.

Mr. W. H. Campbell: I don’t think any good purpose will be served by replying to this letter. There probably are two sides to the question. The board is spending public money, and has to see that it is spent to the best advantage. But there is no doubt, too, that these men have their point of view. I sympathise with them. There is nothing much in what they are doing, for no matter how hard they work they have nothing to look forward to. The chairman (Mr. W. G. Jarvis) said he felt sure that what Messrs. Lassen and Burns had said did not apply in a general way to the unemployed men but to the job where men were put to pushing trucks of soil. Some of the finest local men were, working there, and were doing their jobs, with scarcely any incentive to shift 20 yards a day for 10/-, while other men were shifting 5 1-3 yards, and receiving the same pay. Mr. R. E. Talbot spoke in a similar strain, following which the board affirmed the motion. The discussion then lapsed.