THE BASIC WAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17295, 20 October 1919, Page 9

THE BASIC WAGE.

NEW SOUTH WALES SCALE.

CONSTERNATION AROUSED

GOVERNMENT-TAKING ACTION

[fkom otje own cobeespokdent.]

SYDNEY. Oct. 8.

Th e decision by the New South Wales Board of Trade that, the basic waga should be £3 17s 6d per week caused the utmost

consternation among employers in this State last week. The State Government has promised to step in and take, action: but the position, nevertheless, remains a serious one for industry generally.

This. Board of Trade fixes the basic wage after an inquiry into the minimum amount required to keep a roan and his wife and two children, the inquiry being an annual one, and then all awards oi wages boards and arbitration courts are adjusted to come into line with the finding. = The basic wage has crept up from about £2 lis in 1914 to £-3 last year. This year an increase of from two to four shillings was generally expected. The £o 17s 6d came as a bombshell. It would immediately «3d £14.000.000 to the total wages paid within the State. Bat that was not the wor»t feature ot

the change. Because it operated only ■within the State, it would place the State's business men at a great disadvantage as compared with business men in adjoining States. In Victoria, for instance, wages have never been at the same level as in New South Wales, but the New South Wales employers on their part had the advantage of plentiful supplies ol coal, which Victoria lacks.

So to prevent complete chaos the State Government stepped in, and is hurrying legislation through to obviate the necessity of following the usual course in regard to the basic wage. The argument is that it is wrong to give the basic wage to all employees when it is specially designed, in the interests of the man with a family, but that it would not bo practicable to force employers to pay more to family men than to single men. So the Government is asking the Board of Trade to fix a wage for a man with a wife, and to say how much extra should be allowed in respect of each child. This wage will become the basic wage for single and married employees alike. Then. . in some way that is not quite clear, a i further sum in wages is to be "paid by the employers, not to the employees, but rto a central fund administered by the I Government, and the latter witT pay it to (all men with children, in proportion to 1 the number of their children.

A score of practical difficulties are already in sight. The State says its scheme will raise the wages bill bv £6,500,000, instead of by £14,000,000: but even that amount places a. great handicap on New South Wales industry. The machinery to collect this payment for children from thousands of employers and pay it out to thousands of employees must prove complicated and expensive.