WAGES PAID TO RELIEF WORKERS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 63, 16 March 1931, Page 8

WAGES PAID TO RELIEF WORKERS.

HIGHER RATES URGED IN COUNTRY DISTRICTS.

That local bodies providing relief work in country districts should be recommended to pay wages at the rate of 14s a day, was advocated by Mr J. S. Barnett at a meeting of the Citizen’s Unemployment Committee this morning. He stated that in some cases men, who were receiving only 12s a day from local bodies, were under the handicap of keeping themselves and also of providing for their families at home in Christchurch. Other men were receiving 14s a day.

Mr W. E. Leadlev stated that the Unemplo3*ment Board had laid it down that local bodies should not pay less than the ruling wage rate in their district. If men were receiving 12s a day that was because that was the ruling wage in the district where they were working. Mr Barnett’s recommendation was asking the local bodies to break the rules of the Unemployment Board.

Members expressed the opinion that insistence on a wage of 14s a day might mean that local bodies would refuse to put men on at all. It was decided to hold the matter over pending consideration of the possibility of an interchange system by which each man would take his turn at 12s a day and at 14s a day.