PUBLIC SERVICE SALARIES

Otago Witness, Issue 3542, 31 January 1922, Page 22

PUBLIC SERVICE SALARIES

PROTEST AGAINST REDUCTION. A large audience assembled cn Sunday at the Empire Theatre, where Mr Moses Ayrton, general secretary of the New Zealand Labour Party, delivered an interesting address on the problems with which workers are faced at the present time. Mr Ayrton first made it clear that his motive in coming to Dunedin was to weld together tlie men whose interests were identical. Trade could never be restored until Europe was restored, and the Treaty of Versailles would be better scrapped. The policy of the Labour Party was that war was a crime. There could be no compromise about that. The world was to be made safe for democracy, but now the men who had made those promises were doing their best to restore pre-war conditions instead of pressing on towards better things. The Arbitration Court, he declared, was being used by the employers for the purpose of reducing wages. There was no doubt that Mr Massey and his party were very loyal to the class they represented—the wheat-growers, sheep-farmers, etc,, — who had had no reason to complain during recent years, and now that money was scarce the Government was adopting in a bare-faced manner the policy of pursuing the line of least resistance by reducing the wages of the workers. Bankers were never asked to reduce their huge rates of interest. How long, Mr Ayrton continued, would intelligent men and women bear with being in the hands of an unscrupulous few, who ordered their lives for them? To join up with the Labour Party was the workers only hope of fair treatment. By political and industrial organisation they could bring about the necessary alterations, instead of being at the mercy of the few who lived by exuloitation. The Labour Party constituted ’ the only opposition to reactionary policies, and if the workers would only open their eyes to this fact

and give jit their whole-hearted support they could" work out their own salvation. At the close of the meeting the following resolution was moved by Mr John Gilchrist and seconded by Mr Reddington (representing the railway servants): “That this meeting of representative citizens of Dunedin emphatically condemns the action of the Government in imposing on the publio service a drastic reduction in salaries' and wages; and, further, that in the opinion of this meeting the policy of reducing salaries and wages in preference to increasing taxation on large unearned incomes is class legislation, and contrary to the will of the majority "of the people of this country.” The motion was carried unanimously on a show of hands