DRIVERS’ DEMANDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1944, Page 4

DRIVERS’ DEMANDS

GOVERNMENT’S ATTITUDE NOT GOING TO BE INTIMIDATED. CONCEDING OF DEMANDS C JT OF THE QUESTION. (By Telegraph—Press; Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “The Government is not going to be intimidated by threats of this kind, with demands for an increase in wages in one hand and a pistol in the other,” said the Minister of Railways, Mr Semple, when asked last evening if he had any comment to make on the decision of the Petone railway bus drivers- not to operate services on Sundays till they were paid double rates of pay for work on that day. “There is too much of it,” added the Minister. Mr Semple said that when the bus drivers threatened some weeks ago to stop work unless their demands were met he told them the double time they wanted could not be conceded. The whole wage system was today governed by the Stabilisation Order, and the bus drivers had to adhere to the terms of that order just the same as every other wage earner. “If a group of individuals is able to violate the order and obtain concessions as a result of a threat to strike then stabilisation will break down and collapse,” said the Minister. “That would be to the disadvantage of every worker in the country. If we don’t hold wages we can’t- hold the prices of commodities, for the two go hand in hand. If stabilisation were abandoned and costs and prices were allowed to soar the greatest sufferers would be the wage earners themselves. There is more money in circulation in this country today than there are goods for this money to buy, and an increase in the volume of money without recognition of the fact that there is nothing to buy with it means inflation of the worst order. Inflation is the very worst form of reduction in purchasing power.”

Mr Semple said that conceding the demands of the bus drivers was out of the question'in the present circumstances. The Government was trying to hold stabilisation, and hold it the Government would, or otherwise this country would be in a bad way in a few months’ time.

The boys who are fighting in Italy today, up to their waists in mud and blood, fighting for the freedom of New Zealand in common with the rest oi the peace-loving nations of the world are not demanding double pay for Sunday,” said Mr Semple. “They are fighting 24 hours a day every day under the cold, grim shadows of death, and demands of this character from men living in affluence and safety do not appeal to me. In refusing to carry people they will be penalising men back from overseas who bear the scars of the battlefield, including their wives and relatives. If it is these men’s wish to declare incustrial war on the fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters of our soldiers overseas and refuse to carry them on the highways of this country, then I propose to allow the crime they wish to commit fester in their own conscience, if they possess one.”