COST OF LIVING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 27 April 1922, Page 7

COST OF LIVING.

ARBITRATION COURT PRO-

NOUNCEMENT,

AN EXPLANATION

IBY TELEQHAPfi —MIESS ASSOCIATION.)'

WELLINGTON, April 27. At the Arbitration Court to-day, Mr Justice Frazer said he wished to clear up the misunderstanding in regard to the Court's Wanganui. pronouncement. That pronouncement was not a tentative proposal that wages should be .reduced by os a week. The Court's statement was purely a statistical one, and not in any sense a statement of whether, or to what extent, wages should be reduced. The employers' evidence was continued.

Mr McCombs argued that the reductions in the cost of living had not been rated as the Court anticipated when making the stabilisation proposal, and therefore urged that the stabilisation, period should be extended for a year. The Court could not, if it was to maintain a fair standard of living, reduce the present minimum wages. Workers' wages always lagged behind an increase in the cost of living, and to decrease wages by the amount shown by the reduction in the cost of living would lie to multiply by two the disadvantage which the workers had suffered since and during the war. It was true that wages had fallen in other countries, but wages there had increased in greater ratio than the increase in the cost of living. The 1914 standard of living was iibt a fair one, but to-day's was lower. There was evidence of increased prosperity. Reductions in prices should precede reductions in wages. He asked the Court to urge the Government to appoint a commission to go into the question of what is a fair standard of living.