The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST” TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1939. The Farm Labour Problem

Northern Advocate, 10 January 1939, Page 4

The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST”

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1939. The Farm Labour Problem

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper

IT may seem strange, in view of statements made by Ministers within the last few weeks to the effect that there is no shortage of labour for farms, to find that yesterday, at the instigation of the Minister of Labour, a conference was held in Auckland between representatives of the Labour Department and the Farmers’ Union, to discuss this very question. The fact that such a conference was deemed necessary indicates that, far from there being no labour shortage, there is, in fact, a shortage which ponstitnt.es a real problem to many farmers. Announcements that farmers were not in need of labour were based on the fact that in several districts none applied for assistance when men were released from Public AVorks jobs to take up temporary work on farms. It was immediately pointed out that this reasoning was fallacious, .since farmers .abstained from applying for labour because they could not pay the stipulated wage. This, to a great extent, is the crux of the position. So long as wages are set at a higher level generally thgn the industry can bear, taking into consideration the ruling prices for produce, then farmers'will in a great many eases have to dispense with assistance which they really need for the efficient operation of their farms, and, as an inevitable consequence, there will be a contraction in production, which has already happened hi New Zealand. - ' Some idea of the conflicting viewpoints of farmers and workers is given in the statements issued’ in the last few days, the first by Mr A. Cook, general secretary of the New Zealand Workers’ Union, which takes farm labourers under its-benevolent wing, and the second by the New Zealand Farmers’ Union.

Mr Cook says it is ridiculous to blame the Public Works Department for the “alleged shortage,” and he makes the statement that “farmers in the main are rather selfish,” on the grounds that they expect labour to be available for farms for only a few weeks each year, and don’t care how the worker lives for the rest of the year. , i

The charge of selfishness will cause a good many farmers to smile somewhat wryly, since most of them know from bitter experience, how difficult it is to get efficient and reliable workers, with the result that in busy periods the farmer has to work from daylight till dark.

During the recent holiday period, thousands of people were holidaymaking and enjoying themselves, but there were very few farmers among them. The farmers were toiling under the summer sun, and townspeople and holidaymakers, many of them Government workers on holiday pay, no doubt found their haymaking and harvesting operations a picturesque and fascinating spectacle.

It gives some idea of the changed status of workers these days that before Christmas a party of Public Works employees at the Great Barrier Island chartered an airliner to fly to Auckland for their holidays, a luxury which the Great Barrier farmers in their most prosperous days would never have permitted themselves.

Not, of course, that there is anything objectionable in the chartering of an aeroplane by the Public Works men. ' They are earning good money, and it is only natural that they should wish to spend it and enjoy themselves, but there is a good deal of truth in the Farmers’ Union contention that Public Works are becoming one of the main industries of the country and are competing for labour at a higher figure' than farmers can pay.

It is only when Public Works have to be either abruptly curtailed or else gently tapered off—a course which is quite inevitable and may have to be taken sooner than many people expect—that the farm labour situation will return to normal. Under present circumstances, obtaining good wages, a short working week, and paid holidays at the best time of the year, casual labourers would be less than human if they did not prefer Public Works jobs to the farms.

Many of the young men on Public Works jobs, however, will never be anything 4 else but labourers or tractor-drivers, whereas, in other days, they usually progressed, if they were worth their salt, to farm managerships, and in due course to farms of their own.