THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 1942. Wage Increases

Manawatu Times, Volume 67, Issue 95, 23 April 1942, Page 4

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 1942. Wage Increases

Further extensions of the application of the Arbitration Court’s recent order increasing the wages of award workers were announced last week. The Minister of Labour, correcting the prior ruling of the Commissioner of Defence Construction. Mr. James Fletcher, said that the order of the court would apply to all workers employed on defence construction works who were covered by the Defence Works Labour Legislation Suspension Order. Simultaneously the Prime Minister intimated that the Government had decided to grant an additional cost-of-living allowance to State employees, “at the rate of live shillings a week for employees of 18 years or over who are paid on a weekly basis and £l3 for those paid on an annual basis up to £765 a year. ’ ’ If the Government is determined to apply the ruling of the court to its own employees, regardless of whether they come under awards or not, it cannot with any propriety ignore the claims of others who are entitled to equal if not greater consideration. Are the rank and file of the Armed Forces of the Dominion to remain on a basis of £2 9s a week, and, if so, where the equality of sacrifice is to be seen? A good deal of lip-service has been paid by members of the Labour Party to the principle of equal sacrifice, but in respect of two classes of the community they have failed conspicuously in the matter of performance. We refer to pensioners, to persons on fixed small incomes, and to soldiers and their dependents. Is it to be assumed that some special dispensation protects these from the effects of increases in the cost of living? The truth is, of course, that every argument that may be used to bolster the case for wage increases throughout the organised working body applies with even greater force to those who are wholly dependent on the State for sustenance and those who are compelled to make monetary sacrifices to fulfil, as members of the defence services, the highest obligations of citizenship. The number of pensions—social security and war—in force at the beginning of the year was approximately 215,000. It would be a travesty of justice to deny to the recipients of age benefits and war and other pensions the recompense for higher living costs -which the court has, without justilification, decreed to be reasonable in the case of workers whose wages are governed by awards, and which the Government has itself decided to pass on to high-salaried members of State departments under the guise of a cost-of-living allowance. The case for increased pay and allowances for soldiers was argued effectively by Mr. W. E. Anderson when, as employers’ advocate, he opposed the application for a general order before the Arbitration Court. He pointed out that the calling up of men for military service had lowered the standard of living in thousands of homes throughout the country, and that increases in the cost of living must be felt harshly in a majority of those homes. This is particularly true of young married men who earlier offered themselves or, as now, are being called into camps regardless of the number depending on them for a livelihood. Mr. Anderson made the point that, with the exception of a domestic allowance of one shilling a' day granted in September, 1941, to soldiers’ wives with one or more dependent children, no increase in pay had been granted to offset increases in the cost of living. In the circumstances produced by the decision of the Arbitration Court the Government will show itself entirely lacking in both reason and humanity if it declines to aid by some means those who are compelled to rely on pensions or on small fixed incomes, in many cases the fruits of earlier hard work and thrifty living, while organised labour is able to safeguard its own economic interests by legal processes. And, where the members of the armed forces are concerned, it will show itself to be incapable of properly assessing the value of services if it assumes that the man who offers his life, if need be, in the defence of the country is entitled to less consideration than is extended to workers in privileged employment.