RELIEF WORK SYSTEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22051, 6 September 1933, Page 8

RELIEF WORK SYSTEM

A DEMORALISING EFFECT DEMAND FOR LIVING WAGE (Per United Press Association.) AUCKLAND, September 5. The Auckland Metropolitan Unemployment Relief Committee to-day passed the following resolution : "The committee views with grave concern a continuance of the present system of employing thousands of able-bodied men at the existing low rate of wages, which is inadequate to maintain the workers and their families in a reasonable standard of comfort and compels them to resort to charity. This unsatisfactory system which has now continued for several years is having a most harmful and demoralising effect upon both the men and their dependents and it nas necessitated the organising of a system of charitable relief which is growing and extending throughout the •community and having a detrimental influence on our national life. " While appreciating the past efforts of the Government to extemporise for relieving unemployment we consider that the time has arrived for discontinuing the present system and substituting it by making provision for every ablebodied man to have an opportunity of earning a living wage." EXPERIENCE OF ONEHUNGA FOREMAN'S STRONG INDICTMENT. (Per United Press Association.) AUCKLAND, September 5. The Onehunga Borough Council has been conducting relief works for three years, and last night the foreman (Mr R. Gordon) made a report and recommendations. He said the aggregate strength of the men employed was 600, which was equal to 270 men for full time, but his estimate of their efficient strength was 90 men for full time. "Disinclination to work, lack of ability, poor' equipment, and intimidation towards those men willing to work on the part of the undesirable element, are responsible for much of the loss of efficiency, together with the fact that the proportion of labour to available material is so hopelessly unbalanced that efficient results cannot be expected. My opinion, after three years' experience of supervision of relief work, 'is that it would bo better for the Unemployment Board to take over the whole of the unemployed and pay the existing rates as a dole. In the event of a local body or private firm requiring labour, it could draw on the board for such number of men as would adequately man a job without excess, and thus maintain the standard of workmanship and labour that will -be necessary in prosperous times."

The council will review the whole question at its next meeting.