INDUSTRIAL BURDENS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20257, 17 May 1929, Page 14

INDUSTRIAL BURDENS.

NEW SOUTH WALES IMPOSTS

COMPLAINTS BY EMPLOYERS

[FROM our own correspondent.]

SYDNEY, May 9.

The elysium in which employers are popularly supposed by many wage-earners to livo and have their heing looks at times to bo something of an illusion, what with the risks of capital involved in big enterprises, legislative burdens and, the labyrinthic entanglements of strikes. The latest wages increase, consequent upon the new adjustment of the cost of living, has -naturally not served to put employers in a better frame of miud. Tlie New South Wales Government is oven more alarmed, for the new Federal wage increase will involve it in something like an additional £500,000 a year. Employers looked to the Bavin Government to find some way of relieving them of the child endowment tax, which is only one of industry's legislative burdens in New South Wales. The Government endeavoured to ease the burden by suspending for a time this tax oh wages, when it discovered that the endowment fund was overdrawn to the extent of about £1,000,000. This meant the reimposition of the tax on wages until the fund is sufficient to meet the demands upon it. The Government promises then to review the who] 6 position, but. it is not inconceivable that by that time it will be out of office. Employers are feeling, and have felt for a long time, in fact, that the task of carrying the industrial baby is not one of unalloyed bliss.