FREEZERS’ WAGES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19784, 7 March 1927, Page 6

FREEZERS’ WAGES

INCREASE NOT JUSTIFIED EFFECT ON FARMEES Asked for his opinion on the new freezing workers’ award, the president of the New Zealand Farmers Union, Mr W. J. Polson said yesterday that in his opinion the worst feature was the pronouncement which accompanied the award. Evidently the uncontradicted evidence of farmers had no weight with the Court, he said, and the effect of the awards upon the farming industry was a matter of indifference. "There is no doubt that lower prices are not merely temporary as the Court suggests,” said Mr Polson. "The figures for this year will be worse than those given the Court for last year.” "In spite of this, and of uncontroversed evidence to prove that the reducing of costs was the only hope for the primary producer and for the country generally in surmounting its difficulties, the Court has dismissed it all with unjustified references to the methods of the farmers and if its own estimate is a correct one, it has planted another £15,000 a year of costs on the backs of the producers/’ Continuing Mr Polson said, "To a word the Courts attitude was this: ‘We are not concerned with what hap-

pens to the community as a whole; as the effect of conditions, these workers have got behind a bit in spite of our efforts to keep them well on the rim of the ascending spiral and We must again increase their wages to restore them to their place.” , In regard to freezing workers, it must not be forgotten that they had their wages reviewed and increased in 1925 by the Court. What justification there was for a further and retrospective increase the public could judge for itself. The immediate effect of it on the producer would probably be to reduce the price of fat sheep by twopence a head for the rest of the season. "Mr Justice Frazer refers with some asperity to the demands of farmers for the abolition of the Arbitration Court,” went on Mr Polson. "His remarks cannot, of course, refer to the Farmers’ Union, whose policy hitherto has been opposed to the abolition of the Court, but such pronouncements as this last one will go far in forcing the organisation into line with those who seek the change.”