CHILD ENDOWMENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3801, 18 January 1927, Page 6

CHILD ENDOWMENT.

NEW SOUTH WALES SCHEME

TO COST £7,000,000 YEARLY.' (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, Decc .ber 30. Following the decision of Mr A. B. Piddington, Industrial Commissioner in. New South Wales, that the basic wage should remain unchanged at £4 4s per week, but that as soon as possible a childhood endowment scheme should be effected by the Government, there was a' great outburst from the trade unions. Expectations had been raised that the wage would be increased' by at—least Ga per week, and it was a great blow to the industrialists thqt, in the terms of the plain-minded man, “their own Government had let them down.” It mattered not that the Industrial Commissioner acted independently of Ministers and State officials in his cost of living inquiry, and their influence. A Labour Government was in power, and their power should have been used to increase the basic wage, according to trade union officials.

Mr Lang realised this. In the ordinary course of events the childhood endowment scheme that Mr Piddington favoured would take months to enact. He desired, if possible, that the scheme should be a Federal one. The Lang Government had months of legislation before it, and its path recently has been, and for the next few months will be, an extremely rocky one. Consequently it appeared to trade unionists that their basic wage was to remain unchanged at £4 4s per week. But Mr Lang sprang a bombshell by announcing at the end of last week—a sort of Christmas box for workers with large families, that the Cabinet had agreed to a child endowment scheme that -would be nushed through Parliament immediately after the New Year. The plan adopted is Mr Piddington s own suggestion. Briefly, it is that a worker shall be paid 6s per week for each child in his family under the age of 14 years above the basic wage. The scheme will apply to all workers, whether under a State or Federal award, in receipt of salaries or wages up to £750 per annum. Hie endowment will become operative from the date of Mr Piddington’s decision, December 15.

The Premier (Mr Lang) estimates that the cost of the scheme to the State will be £1,500,000, and the cost to employers will approximate 6 per cent, of their wages bill. This is calculated at about £5,500.000, or a total cost to the State and employers of about £7,000,000 per annum. It is estimated that the total number of persons, including parents, who will benefit under the scheme, will, be as uirder: — Where there is one child ... 180,000 Where there are two children ... 206,500 Where there are three, children 174,000 Where there are four children ... 125,000 Where there are five children ••• <6,000 V7here there arc six children and over 59,000 The whole scheme is regarded as bad by the people whom it will affect the most—the employers. They contend that industry has been supporting imaginary children by the fixation of the basic wage m the past as the means of providing for a man, his wife, and two children, and they contend that, combined with the endowment scheme, the present basic wage of £4 4s—now really the basis of the cost of living, for a man and his wife —is too high. Again, it is declared that the maximum salaries of £750 a year is far too high a limit. The employees, too, arc not appeased. Although the wage is satisfactory to some, most consider that the scheme is too great an experiment, and that the basic wage should have been given a straight-out increase on the old basis, while others believe that it will only succeed if it is a Federal concern. New South Wales, they point out, will be handicapped in competition with other States by a scheme which affects only this State. The commonsense view, of course, is that the scheme will hit the very persons it is designed to help most. All employers’ experience is that their most reliable and conscientious men are those who have families to support. But when two men with apparently equal qualifications apply for a position, one with no family or but one or two children, and the other with four, five, or six children, would the employer be anything but human if he decided to sign up the man with the smaller family, because his services would cost his business less? No legislation in the world will be able to prevent this discrimination, and therein lies the greatest obstacle to the successful operation of the scheme.