UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 268, 12 October 1932, Page 2

UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Can anybody say when the Unemployment Board, local Labour Department, or Unemployment Committee will be able to make up their individual and collective minds about anything? Before the introduction of the new No. 5 scheme rates, the Minister for Employment piously repeated that “the unfortunate men” were receiving 2,3, and 4 days weekly, whereas for the better part of a year they were merely being held together with 1,2 and 3 days. Then came the new rates. After half-a-dozen contradictory statements in the Press as to what they were, some sort of a schedule was fixed.up locally at 1, IJ, 2,2 J and 4 days. The day after the workmen wero told by the gangers that this was wrong and that some other scale was “starting next week.” So there was a strike. After the strikers had been “watched and besetted” (whatever that is), another rate came along: 1,2 J, 3 and 4 days. Then the local Unemployment Committee announced that Mr Jessep was coming to Palmerston North on Monday to fix up everything. About 10 a.m. Mr Jessep wired the committee that he had been “instructed” to go to Aka Aka (there must be nearly three unemployed at Aka Aka). In yesterday’s local papers Mr Cadwallader was reported as having fixed up the new scale at 1 or 1} (single), 3, 3} and 4 days. Now, we all like Mr Cadwallader, and thought it was pretty decent, under the circumstances. Tins morning the City Council foreman and his clerical staff told us that there was no money for the single men, who worked yesterday, and they coudln’t be paid. The married men were on ope of the other scales.—l am, etc., A NUMBER FIVER.