WAGES AND THE FAMILY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18173, 19 August 1922, Page 9

WAGES AND THE FAMILY

COMPLAINT OF INEQUITIES. THE AUSTRALIAN SYSTEM. A. and N.Z. BRISBANE, Aue. 18. At a conference of the Australian Employers' Council, Mr. William Brooks, of Sydney, in an address on the basic wage, said the amount paid in wages through-, out the Commonwealth as a direct result of the assumed increase in maintaining ths -worker, his wife, and. dependent children, showed an increase between the years 1914 and 1920 of £100,000,000 per annum. Of this £40,000,000 was paid to unmarried adult males, and a further £12,000,000 to married adults without children. This proved that not only had the wages of such workers been unwarrantably inflated, but an •unwarrantable burden had been placed on the shoulders of men with large families. He urged the need of basing the living wage upon the coßt of maintaining a husband and wife only, with an additional provision recording the number of dependent children. The conference adopted resolutions in 1 favour of fixing the basic wage along the above lines, instead of the present twochildren standard, condemning reduction of the 48 io 44-hour week, favouring an amendment of the Arbitration Act re-sti-icting its functions to specified industries, and providing a declaration of the basic wage for periods not exceeding sis months.