PENNY iN THE POUND

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 336, 23 April 1928, Page 1

PENNY iN THE POUND

UNEMPLOYMENT FUND SUGGESTED LEVY ON WAGES (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, To-day. By collecting one penny in the £. on the wages of workers, a fund could-be raised sufficient to provide work for 10,000 unemployed for six months., This is the basis of a national seneme of unemployment insurance put forward by the Mayor, Mr. G. A. Troup, at the last meeting cf the Wellington City Council. Briefly, the scheme may bo explained as follows: Contributions should be compulsory, and made in equal proportions by wage-earners, Employers, local bodies, and the Government. The work to be provided should be manual labour, and only males should be provided for. To start the scheme, the fund should be sufficient to provide work for 10,t*0U men for six months in any year. T » do this, allowing for an average weekly wage of £3 for each worker, the sum of £780,000 would be required. The annual wages bill in Xew Zealand was approximately £ 50,000,000. If one penny for insurance were levied for every £ 1 received in wages, and the wage-earner, employer, local body, and Government each paid this levy of one penny, a sum of £833,333 would be paid into the fund each year. All work for unemployed should be provided and carried out by local bodies throughout New Zealand. Each local body should receive from the mild as its share the amount of the various levies collected in its district, including the Government contribution, with which the costs of any works provided for the unemployed would be paid. Where a worker resided in one district and worked in another, his contribution, with subsidies, would be credited to the district in which he resided, and this district would provide him with work when unemployed. Schedules of -unemployed” works would have to be prepared by local bodies beforehand, and due preparation made to meet any unemployment contingency that might arise. “Unemployed” work should be confined to six months, from May to November. No man would then get more than six months’ “unemployed” work in any year. The work when at all possible should be piecework, so that payment should be according to the work done-. No man should be given “unemployed” i work unless he had been a subscriber to the insurance fund for a given time. In prosperous times, when there was little or no unemployment, the fund should be allowed to accumulate, and when a sufficiently large sum had so accumulated the levies could be reduced or stopped for a time. The wages paid should be less than standard wages, so that men would not l>e encouraged to remained on ‘unemployed” work.