MEN FOR HARVESTING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3828, 2 November 1936, Page 5

MEN FOR HARVESTING

ARE THERE ENOUGH? WAIKATO FARMERS IN DOUBT. Had the Farmers’ Union put pressure on the Government to see that adequate farm labour was available during the harvesting season? asked Mr F. W. Seifert at the Farmers’ Union rally at Morrinsville last Wednesday addressed by the Dominion and the Auckland presidents of the union. “It will help our representations if you can obtain definite evidence of a shortage of labour in your district,” said Mr W. H. Mulholland, Dominion president. He urged all farmers who could not get men to make a formal application to the placement officer of the district. The Government had undertaken to release men from Public Works camps to do seasonal farm work, and had promised to keep places open for them in the camps when they had to return from the farms after harvesting. In the absence of definite information as to the probable labour shortage it was hard for the Farmers’ Union to do more. Perhaps farmers of the district could make a survey of the requirements of their district. Unless farmers applied to the placement officers for men the Government would declare that there was no shortage of men. Speaking of the efforts of the Auckland executive of the Farmers’ Union to secure adequate farm labour, Mr H. O. Mellsop (Auckland president) said the placement officer at Auckland was doing good work Il happened that there had been only one dairyfarmer on the placement officer’s list, but about 1800 motor drivers. Since these facts were published there had been applications from all over the country by men who were willing to work on dairy farms. A scheme had also been drawn up for training suitable men who had no experience of farm work but were willing to learn. MARRIED COUPLES AND HOLIDAYS. As a result of representations from the Farmers’ Union, said Mr Mellsop, the Minister had promised an amendment to the Act relating to the employment of married couples,' to the effect that the employer could make his own arrangements as to the pay of the woman worker. As regards holidays for farm workers, the Farmers’ Union had failed in its request that the half-holiday per week be between milkings. This was against the principles of the Government. One concession agreed to by the Minister was that the farmer and employee could agree on a fortnight’s extra pay in lieu of a a fortnight’s holiday. Mr F. C. Bush (Matamata) mentioned that a Matamata farmer had applied to the placement officer for a man and had been told there were 80 applications in ahead of him. LAUGH ON THE MINISTER. Mr H. J. Valintine raised a round of laughter by asking whether the Minister of Agriculture was competent, seeing that he had allowed bills affecting farmers to go through, which the farmers had to ask to have amended. Mr Mulholland smilingly declined to be drawn into comment on the Minister. “The Minister of Labour put his foot down and says it is not a halfholiday if a man has to come home for the milking,” said Mr Mellsop, after Mr Valintine had mentioned how difficult it would be to look after the milking machines with one shedhand away. “And yet we were told we had a Minister of Agriculture who was up to the knocker!” exclaimed Mr Valintine. have made up my mind that the farming industry could not get on under the Arbitration Court,” said Mr Mulholland in explaining that the Farm Workers Act could be regarded as “the lesser off evils.” “If you come under the Arbitration you will probably find you will be saddled with lots more restrictions,” he said. “We have accepted what ,we have as a compromise, knowing that if we stalled the Government would have done something, and that might have made us subject to all sorts of irksome restrictions.”