UNEMPLOYED CAMPS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20519, 22 January 1935, Page 14

UNEMPLOYED CAMPS.

Case for Married Men Outlined. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, January 21. A statement issued by the National Union of Unemployed says that a matter of grave public moment was the Unemployed Board’s determination to compel married men to accept Public Works Department’s camp work at what the administration describes as standard wages, namely ten shillings per day, less time lost through wet weather, etc. The statement says the board had begun to enforce this policy at Ohai, Southland, where thirty men had been deprived of work near their homes and ordered to proceed to a Public Works camp job forty miles distant. These men had refused to recognise the right of the Government compulsorily to draft men away from their families, apart from a grave national emergencv. The executive of the National Union had approached the Government and the Unemployment Board, endeavouring to secure the abandonment of the policy. Mr W. Bromley, deputy-chair-man of the board, had stated that if unemployed men refused to accept this work they would be debarred from further relief. When requested to offer camp work to single men at the same rate and conditions, he declined, stating that if the Public Works Department decided to accept single men for work, the board would reduce the subsidy on wages to the lower level compatible with the lower single men’s rate. The National Union contends that in insisting on married men accepting this camp work against their will, the board is endeavouring to establish the evil principle of compulsion in the relationship of employer to employee. The work would be directly beneficial to property-owners in the localities to be improved, and they were quite capable of bearing a portion of the cost, which would ensure a famil}*- living wage payment to the essential labourer. ,