UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22326, 28 July 1934, Page 12

UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF

The Unemployment Board lias not found it possible or desirable to pursue an absolutely hard and fast, uncompromising policy in respect of unemployment relief. The principle of no relief without work could be rigorously observed only provided work of a suitable kind were always available for everybody looking for employment. Apart from that, there is the case of those who are actually unfit for work of any kind. Upon the Unemployment Board devolves the responsibility of spending to the best advantage the money provided by general taxation for unemployment relief, as well as of endeavouring by constructive proposals to contribute to the solution of the unemployment problem itself. It has been guided a good deal by its experience in its administrative operations, and to a certain extent its policy has been experimental. The question of sustenance payments has been the subject of controversy. The Board’s problem has been in part to ensure that sustenance in lieu of work should not be made too attractive and should be subject to suitable reservations in its application. It had kept the payments on a scale somewhat

lower than it might have adopted had considerations apart from their adequacy not asserted themselves. It has found, however, that local bodies have been experiencing increased difficulty in providing suitable relief work for all who are looking for it. The Minister now explains that the Board has been gradually testing the principle of relief by means of sustenance without work in a few of the larger centres, and he observes that though this system may be as badly abused as any other thei’e seems no escape from this form of payment. The conclusion is one which seems to have been arrived at in the circumstances. The Board decided to improve the scale- of payments for B class relief workers, who include the older men and semi-fit men able to do light work only. For a period of three months it will observ'd the results of raising the payments for sustenance without work in such cases to substantially the same amount as is paid under No. 5 scheme with work. That should mean the withdrawal of a certain number of men from work which has admittedly been in many instances of little use to anybody concerned, and it is to be hoped that it may mean a raising of the average of relief work as regards both utility and performance. The Board has to bear in mind at all times the extent to which the community is taxed for unemployment relief and the desirability of the easing of that burden. But general opinion will endorse the view that there are cases in. which the unemployment taxation could with propriety be lifted altogether without more ado. People are paying the tax who are in very poor circumstances, being as badly, if not worse, off than those to whose relief they are contributing. This represents a state of affairs which should be remedied, even at the expense of a delay in a general reduction of taxation, and the Minister’s statement with respect to cases of hardship is to be welcomed. Another direction in which the Board aims at improving the unemployment situation is in the institution of full-time employment in all married men’s camps at the standard rate paid in camps controlled by the Public Works Department. Its proposals are generally of a liberal character. But it receives little credit for them. Although there was, on the day after that on which they were announced, a long discussion in Parliament on the subject of unemployment, there seems to have been not a word of, acknowledgment from the Opposition of the Board’s; revision of the rates.