THE WAIPA POST. Printed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. TUESDAY, 8th NOVEMBER, 1932. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3252, 8 November 1932, Page 4

THE WAIPA POST. Printed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. TUESDAY, Bth NOVEMBER, 1932. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

SOME concern has been expressed locally—and in other parts of New Zealand, too —at the decision of the Unemployment Board to make a further reduction in the weekly amount provided for maintenance of the existing methods of unemployment relief. Conditions of relief work are not to be altered, but a reduced number of hours per week will be worked. It is hoped that relief workers will take every opportunity of obtaining other work, and the fact that the hay-mak-ing, shearing, harvesting, and dairying seasons are all at hand should provide opportunity for many hundreds to get off relief works and on to more lucrative jobs, even though the change entails more hours per week. Apparently the Unemployment Board, having been living beyond its income in recent months, is intent upon effecting economies. That some reduction of expenditure is realised now to be desirable, if not absolutely necessary, is easily understood. The Board was authorised by the Government to spend up to £91,000 a week on relief in July, August, and September, in which months it was estimated that the unemployed and their dependents would be particularly hard pressed. But expenditure at that rate, if continued throughout the year, would amount to over £4,700,000, which is in excess to the extent of approximately £850,000 of the estimated sum total of the Board's receipts from taxation. With the advent of seasonal employment there should not be the same need in any case for expenditure on relief at the rate thai was maintained during the winter months. Curtailments are, however, not unlikely to bring their own problems, and in the absence as yet of any definite pronouncement from the Board it is impossible to judge of the merits of the proposals to that end which are understood to be in contemplation. It is suggested that, apart from the need to conserve its funds, the Unemployment Board considers it impolitic to make its relief schemes " too attractive" during the time of year in which outside work should be more plentiful. This makes the more pertinent a statement by Mr A. C. Mitchell, president of the Employers' Federation, at the annual meeting of that organisation- last week. Mr Mitchell said that, when it is realised that the vasjt majority of the unemployed are victims of circumstances over which they have no control, and are anxious and willing to work, and that the measures of relief that can be afforded them are such as to provide for a bare existence only and to involve denial in many cases for their wives and children of things which those in regular employment regard as essential, it is hard to understand the viewpoint of those who deliberately go on strike rather than adopt constitutional methods for the redress of their grievances. The allusion to striking may be less than fortunately expressed. What has really happened is that in certain industries in which awards or agreements have run out there has been a refusal on the part of the employees to work on terms submitted by the employers. It is difficult, of course, to understand the motives actuating men who have regular employment in their refusal to accept reductions in wages which would still leave them something better than a living wage as the cost of living stands at present, when they see around them thousands of unemployed who are anxious to get work at their various callings, but, because it is not available, are obliged to accept relief work which serves little more than to keep body and soul together. In the Lower House last Wednesday the acting Minister of Employment was asked if he would issue instructions that the workers affected by the dispute in the freezing industry should receive relief work. The request was a somewhat cool one i in view of the fact that these men f are idle at the present time of their own choice, and are not, therefore, on the same footing as those far whose assistance the taxpayers are shouldering a heavy burden. The Unemployment Fund was certainly not instituted for the benefit of those who wilfully quarrel with the regular employment which is open to' them- at the : present time. • As regards mien who are anxious to get work there should be no. great danger of the Un- ) employment Board's schemes proving, unduly "attractive," and nobody can wish that such men should receive treatment comparing favourably with that accorded them at the present time, which would react on their dependents. Unfortunately a percentage of'the unemployed are unemployable in any industry, and among them

are those who have discovered, by some obscure process of reasoning, that they have many " rights," one of which is to loaf on their jobs at the expense of those who are taxed for the provision of unemployment relief.