DISABLED SOLDIERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21247, 29 July 1932, Page 10

DISABLED SOLDIERS

EMPLOYMENT FACILITATED APPEAL FOR ASSISTANCE The provisions of all awards and industrial agreements, including conditions governing under-rate workers and apprentices insofar as they prevent or restrict the employment and training of discharged soldiers coming within the scope of the Discharged Soldiers' Civil Re-estab-lishment Act, 1930, wore suspended in February last by Order-in-Council under legal authority taken in 1919, and a strong effort is now being made to obtain suitablo employment for men who have had to subsist mainly on their pensions since the war. The Auckland committer, of which Major-General Sir George Richardson is chairman, and Mr. C. J. Aitken is the employment officer provided by the Government, is making an appeal for tho co-operation of employers. The positjon is that an ex-soldier may bo employed at any wage agreed upon, his economic pension being fixed at a sum to bring his total weekly return to a standard not less than the amount to which ho would be entitled under the Pensions Act. Already several men have been placed in industrial employment with reasonable prospects of becoming permanent skilled hands. One, for instance, who had not had the opportunity of earning much or learning anything for seven or eight years, is 'n a factory where he receives £2 10s a week, pension payments bringing the total to £4 55.. It is hoped that employers will give sympathetic consideration to the claims of men who. through their war service and injuries, misSed their chance of finding a place of usefulness in society and hrtve suffered from a sense of neglect and- frustration.