REWARDING THE SOLDIER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23482, 20 October 1939, Page 13

REWARDING THE SOLDIER

Sir, — Is it not time the Government stopped calling for military volunteers, while at the same time men engaged on buildings and other works about camps are being paid time and a-lialf, or double time, for doing their ordinary work, and are being lauded to the skies as if they were doing something heroic in adding a few paid hours to their very short working week? There is no double pay for the men who have given up their jobs to risk their lives for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a', a few shillings a day. Another thing that needs regulating is this idea of public bodies undertaking to make up the difference between the military pay of an employee enlisting and the civil pay he is relinquishing, plus" any increment that might become due while absent. Certainly the soldier deserves the extra pay, but it is the differentiation between the employees of a public body and of a private employer that is wrong. Some private employers are endeavouring to carry out the same idea, but not all can possibly afford to do so. And it seems to me that the farming community comes off bndly all the timo. Imagine any farmer employing. Kav, two hands, both of whom enlist, hastily inquiring, and journeying hither and thither to get two men to take their , place. At last, after a few days, or n week or two, he geis help, which may or may not be capable; then he has to pay them full wages. How can he possibly go on making up the difference in pay to his former employees, whose patriotic action he may have approved of, although it left him in a hole, with the herd in full milk, and only the weary schoolchildren to help him? And can one blame, the employees that' they feel n little bitter when they mingle with, sn.v, borough council labourers, and find the latter are having their pay supplemented by the public body, who are 'merely being generous with the ratepayers' money? The proper plan would be for public and private bodies to contribute to a common central fund, which would be distributed ill", proper proportion to the men,' either periodically or on their return. E.B.G.