UNEMPLOYMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19803, 31 May 1926, Page 6

UNEMPLOYMENT.

The Prime Minister is attacking the existence of unemployment in the country with a readiness for which he is not receiving sufficient credit hi certain quarters that are politically opposed to him. He has stated with perfect clearness the principles upon which the relief of unemployment is to be undertaken by the Government. He proposes that married men should be provided with work as near to the towns as possible, and that the unmarried men will have to “hike out” into the country. There is nothing unreasonable in that. But Mr Coates is being abused because he has said that the Government will determine the rates of wages upon which unemployment relief will be granted. He has made this statement in terms that were as emphatic as they could be, and that have provided a text for a renewal of the somewhat threadbare cry that the Government is seeking to reduce the standard of wages. The absurdity of a charge of this description should be apparent to the industrial classes. The work upon which the Government proposes to utilise the labour of those who are unemployed will be strictly of an emergency character. It will be, Mr Coates has explained, something entirely apart from the programme of public works upon which the Government is already engaged. It will be work specially undertaken for the specific object of affording relief, and it may be conjectured that it will be work for which most of those who will obtain employment at it will not be really adapted. To suggest that the men who will thus be employed in order that their necessities may be relieved should, whatever their qualifications for the work may be, receive the full trade union rates that are paid to skilled workmen is to suggest that a premium should be put on inefficiency and on “loafing.” The Minister of Labour expressed the opinion a few days ago that unemployment iu the country is less acute than it has boon represented to be. The first thing to be done is to secure a complete re-

gister of the unemployed. A great deal of reliance is not to be placed on the figures that are supplied from unofficial sources. The Labour Department’s own register must be accepted by the Government as the guide to the measures of relief that are, contemplated by it — although, of course, the local authorities have, as well as the Government, a measure of responsibility for the provision of relief. When the numbers of those who are actually unemployed are ascertained the programme of emergency work on which their labour may be utilised can be scheduled. Some of the critics of the Government seem to think that the process should be reversed—that the work should be provided first and the extent of unemployment ascertained afterwards. But instances have been known in the past of workmen leaving their employment in order to troop to Government jobs, especially to those in the vicinity of the cities. That is a form of migration which it is not desirable to encourage.