NOT WAGES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 1 September 1932, Page 8

NOT WAGES

PAYMENTS TO RELIEF WORKERS •PARLIAMENT’S POLICY A statement of the Unemployment Board’s policy was made by Mr J. S. Jessep, chairman of the board, during the course of an interview with the “Rotorua Morning Post. He inch cated that the board was making every endeavour to eke out available funds to the best advantage and thus avoid further taxation, lie also stated that, in his opinion, the afforestation activities in the Rotorua districts could be extended under unemployment schemes. The unemployed in eacli locality, Mi; Jessep said, are being carried by those citizens who, either from past savings or from their reduced earnings in ordinary industry, are contributing through the Unemployment Fund toward the support of their less fortunate fellows. The measure of relief is obviously regulated by the capacity of the community to bear the taxation which is the source of the fund; and evidence is noc wanting that the resources of the community are already strained to the utmost. The payments made to unemployed from the fund are not pretended to be wages, but merely relief to supplement the individual’s own efforts to secure for himself and his family food and shelter during a period of extraordinary difficulty. It has been laid down by the people, through Parliament, that the relief made available from unemployment taxation must be worked for; and, as a matter of policy, several other primary considerations are kept in view by the board in its trusteeship of the fund. These are that the money should reach those whose degree of real need ior help is greatest ; that the work done should, as far as can be arranged, be of a productive nature; and that regard must be bad for the effect produced on the .character of the men themselves by the nature of the work and the manner in which it is given. An important consideration which also must- not he overlooked is the danger of cutting across normal industry by approaching too closely with relief to the average earnings in industry. If is a fact that in respect of at least two large industries the margin is already dangerously narrow. It would be.a disastrous consequence of the present stiuation if people receiving relief became permanently satisfied with that condition, and lost all incentive to relieve their fellpwcitizens 'of the cost of keeping them.

It is not generally known that the measure of relief being given in New Zealand is higher than that given in any other British Dominion, if not in any other part of the world. During the present winter it has been increased, but must necessarily be reviewed as the spring comes on.