THE WAGE RATE

Southland Times, Issue 21264, 10 December 1930, Page 7

THE WAGE RATE

LORD BARNBY’S OPINION SIMULTANEOUS AMENDMENT OF AWARDS STRONG ACTION NEEDED (Per United Press Association.) Wellington, December 9. Speaking on New Zealand conditions to the Chamber of Commerce, Lord Barnby said that as he understood it, the situation would call for legislation by agreement making it possible for simultaneous amendments to all the existing awards of the Arbitration Court. That like other actions necessarily required courage and submergence of party interests by local statesmen but this was a real emergency and local patriotism should make a course possible. It would follow that with equal courage the railways should be recognized as an ordinary commercial undertaking made free from political influence. Why try to evade the unescapable logic that it was no longer a monopoly since road transportation, private and collective, was irrepressible competition which had come to stay? he said. Social service legislation and an extension of a bureaucracy, however desirable in prosperity, must, in current adversity, be rigorously denied and even ruthlessly curtailed. The payments made for relief work should be limited to a basis sufficiently below current rates for normal employment to put such relief work into proper relation to the general wage rate and remove the risk of such relief payments disturbing the existing employed. Action by New Zealand along these and other obvious lines would alone appear likely to give confidence to loan holders and when a correction had been effected make available to New Zealand funds which, like all new developing countries, she must have to ensure sound and prudent progress. PROTEST AGAINST REDUCTION TYPOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION. Dunedin, December 9. ■ The executive of the New Zealand Typographical Association has issued a statement viewing with grave concern the demand of the Employers’ Federation for wages reduction. The demand is characterized as a step on the road to the coolie level, acting as an incentive to other countries in the vicious struggle for markets to drive their workers still lurther down in the attempt to capture an already glutted and limited market. The hope of increased consumption in these markets is dubbed as illusory since in those countries served the purchasing power has been steadily reduced to subsistence level. The statement concludes: It is evident that the possibility of a local market through greater purchasing power and. consumption and maintaining higher wages with the introduction of a seven-hour-day offer a practical if a partial solution.”