A Winter Problem

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 642, 19 April 1929, Page 8

A Winter Problem

Slackness in Seasonal Work A HARD winter is approaching for thousands oi people in Auckland, and social workers in the city will be faced with the most difficult problem of their existence in relieving distress caused by unemployment. Even seasonal jobs—the hardy standby of intermittent workers —promise to be fewer than in previous years.

j r |''o say that the position now is worse j than it appeared 12 months ago j is simply to reflect the figures regisi tered at the Labour Department's 1 bureau, the official index to the industrial labour market. At the beginning of April last year there were 755 men on the books and about 30 a week were being placed. This month opened with 921 registered names, and the list has since risen to over 1,000. Ninety-four were placed a fortnight ago, and 23 were given jobs last week. This increase in the registrations of out-of-work men, which varies from week to week according to the jobs offering throughout the district, would not bear any significance more serious

than that to which everyone has lately become accustomed were it not for the meagre prospects of work during the coming winter. But the increase in the registrations is accompanied by no corresponding rise in the number of men placed. On the contrary the ratio of men who are found jobs to the registrations threatens to become smaller now that harvesting operations are worked out and the completion of bush jobs is forcing men from the Southern country districts into Auckland. May, June and July are the most severe months for employment depression, and at mid-winter, rock bottom is touched on the scale which is weighted so heavily against the jobseeker. Relief payments at the Auckland Hospital emphasise the necessity for quick preparation of work for the winter if any alleviation is to be registered. Of the £44,000 paid out during the financial year just ended,

£20,000 was attributed by the board to unemployment relief. This sum is over three times the amount spent in this direction 10 years ago, and many thousands greater than last year’s allocation.

In some families the receipt of distress payments has become hereditary. The Hospital Board has on record the name of a man whose family has been drawing relief money since the days of his grandfather. The prospects for work during the approaching winter are not so attractive as at this time 12 months ago. Loans which had been raised locally and subsidised by the Government were being used for developmental relief work in the early winter of 1925, while the last of the soldiers* relief fund had not then been exhausted. In addition, local bodies beyond the city boundaries were contributing a share toward the palliation of what was then recognised as a depressing outlook. This year there is no city fund for winter employment, and little work on to which men can be turned, while the seasonal wolf is scratching at their doors. Moreover, no concerted move has been made to lighten the burden upon family breadwinners and payers of rentForestry is perhaps the mainspring of winter labouring activity, but here again there is an indication of curtailment in the number of men wanted for tree-planting.

FORESTRY PROSPECTS

No announcement has been made from Wellington as to the programme of the State Forest Service, and the Auckland branch has not received a confirmation of its proposals for local requirements. Last year about 4.000 acres were planted at the Maramarua and Riverhead plantations, employing in the aggregate about 240 men. The Government has yet to decide whether planting operations this year will be undertaken purely as a commercial move or whether the acute nature of the unemployed situation will influence the scope of the season’s work. Private afforestation will absorb a large number of men, but even here the programme is below last year’s allocations. The New Zealand Perpetual Forests, Ltd., which planted 20,000 acres of trees last winter and employed over 1,000 men, has reduced the 1929 programme to 12,000 acres of planting to employ about 750 men. At the present time there are 350 at work on the company’s plantations. Other private afforestation companies will go ahead with their planting, but their influence as a palliative in the labour market will be comparatively small. If the Auckland transport loan is carried on May S, about 300 men will be engaged in tramway extensions, but this work cannot be put in hand until certain formalities are arranged. In the city of Auckland, then, the outlook for the seasonal worker this winter is not the brightest star in his life, and any relief that reaches him must, it appears at present, come from the State.