THE BASIC WAGE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 18143, 8 July 1919, Page 4

THE BASIC WAGE.

We had occasion, some months ago to comment upon the instructions given by Parliament to the Arbitration Court to take into consideration alterations, ga Vi* cost of living when framing new schedules of wages, and wo remarked at the time that however well-meaning the spirit which prompted the enunciation of the principle, the cost of living problem could n'ot be solved by any snc h r nle-of-thumb means. Tho attitude which tlie Federation of Boot Trade Employees has taken up ovevji decent refusal of the Arbitrate Court

to revise on agreement entered into as lately as last November illustrates very neatly the two principal difficulties which Parliament’s benevolent interference has imported into tho industrial arena. The first of these arises through the fact that .tho Court has como to be regarded as an agency for the perpetual adjustment of wages in relation to the cost of living, which, indeed, Poems to have been tho legislative intention, but which robs the awards of the Court of that element of stability which was their principal recommendation as a means of ensuring industrial .peace. The second difficulty arises partly, but. not wholly, out of the first. The Court in its cognisance of alterations in the Cost of living has evolved some sort of a concept regarding that elusive quantity, a “ living wage.” It has decided that a cortain rate of pay under certain economic conditions is the minimum on which a wage-earner can decently exist and rear a family. This rate, the Court’s “ basic wage,” to use its own term, was made tho bedrock rate for the lowest grade of unskilled labour. It marked a considerable nominal advance on the normal rate of previous years, and the Court decided that it could not make pro rata increases to suit the higher grades of occupation without- seriously disturbing conditions and accentuating the increase in the cost of living which it was its task to remedy. It therefore built upon its basic wage what may bo called a flattened scale, under which the higher the wage coming up for review the less was the relative increase. If tho application of tho panaceas of the basic wage and the flattened scale had bad any effect upon the tendency of tho cost of living to go on increasing, all might have been well. But the cost of living was stimulated rather than subdued by these efforts, in the efficacy of which it may be guessed that the Court, being composed of intelligent men, had no faith whatever. As time went on, therefore, the basic wage had to bo increased and tho flattened scale made still flatter, until to-day we find the boot operatives complaining that general labourers in Timaru, who went to the Court at a later stage -than the operatives, hare been awarded actually a higher rate than is specified by tho Court for skilled labour in the boot trade in Christchurch. The phenomenon, of course, is simply explained. A steadily rising cost of living, accentuated perhaps by purely local conditions in Timaru, has necessitated the raising of tho basic wage well into the middle of the flattened scale 'of earlier awards for skilled trades. Human nature being human nature, this qunsi-socialis-tic process of wage-levelling does not appeal to the people whoso wages are not raised, and tho storm-clouds of industrial strife which tho Arbitration Court was set up to banish aro hovering on tho horizon bccauso that Court has been compelled to adopt an unscientific and, on final analysis, an inequifcab!o policy. It- is to be trusted that the inevitable ( results of this policy, tho first fruits <7f which have not been long in making thoir appearance, will induce Parliament at n'o distant date to tackle the tough problem of the cost of living in a less empiric and dilettante manner than that which characterised its last tussle with the subject.