THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. "Public Service.” FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1939. INDUSTRIAL TROUBLES

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 48, Issue 2922, 30 June 1939, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. "Public Service.” FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1939. INDUSTRIAL TROUBLES

INDUSTRIAL troubles, mostly caused by demands for increased wages, have recently been occurring with disturbing frequency in spite of the Government’s appeal to the workers to “go easy” in their wages demands and give the Labour Party’s policy a fair chance to prove its worth. The action taken by the New Zealand naval ratings, by State housing workers and now the strike of men employed in chemical fertiliser works at Auckland, have created the impression that the Government is not receiving the utmost co-operation even from the labour unions. While the Government made an appeal to patriotism, however, the union members are viewing the matter from the effect it has upon their pockets. Living costs and taxation are, of course, the primary cause of the workers’ dissatisfaction. Wages which they are demanding now, or even those which they are receiving, would have seemed ridiculously high before the cost of living and the levying of taxation began their steep climb three or four years ago. Workers are finding that costs are constantly overtaking increases in wages and in some cases, notably in the fertiliser industry, the men are making a v#ry bold bid to leap, ahead by a spectacular inse in wages. And the more t’hey demand the higher will prices go. The end of the process will be reached when production represented by the industries can go no further. Production is not so elastic as the Government once suggested it was and the members of the Cabinet are well aware of the danger; hence the appeal to the workers to “go easy.” But the Government owes a primary duty to the people to make it possible to “go easy.” Profligate spending* in a desperate attempt to force prosperity was undertaken by the Government as a deliberate policy, with the inevitable result of mounting costs and increasingly insistent de 7 mands for higher wages. Now the process must not- only be checked but must to some extent be reversed if industrial stability is to be maintained, because to a major extent the upper limit is fixed by the world parity of prices. Internal demand and an internal system of prices alone cannot sustain the industries ;ip:n which the whole country depends. That is the problem the Government now has to face and, no doubt, something will be heard of it during the present session of Parliament. The Government will ask how it can conserve the money value of wages and the answer is economy. It will want to know how it can economise without causing hardship and unemployment. Again the answer is clear. It has been spending millions of pounds in providing uneconomic work for an army of unemployed. It must find economic work for those men and the only way that can be done is to foster and encourage the industries. An enormous load of State expenditure could be removed if the productive industries were really prosperous and they cannot be: prosperous if they are overburdened

with taxes and costs while then own returns are strictly limited. The economies thus made possible would be reflected in reduced cost of living and taxation —and the process would have been reversed. A reduction in living costs would be more welcome to workers than a forced increase in wages. Spending a way to prosperity may have its uses as a short-term policy but, as a permanent practice, it is impossible. Spending can be increased only to the extend that production is increased.