£l0,000 A WEEK

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18478, 5 November 1931, Page 10

£lo,ooo A WEEK

COST OF LIVING DROP. IN NEW SOUTH WALES. About 100,000 workers in New South Wales employed under Federal awards will suffer an average reduction of 2s a week owing to the fall in the retail price index figure. The total loss will be about £IO,OOO a week, says a Sydney paper. Principal occupations affected by the reduction are:—Theatrical employees, actors, merchant service guild men, marine engineers, stewards and cooks, seagoing carpenters, ships’ carpenters, shipwrights, waterside workers, ship painters and dockers, tally clerks, all metal trades workers (including engineers, blacksmiths, boilermakers, ironworkers, electrical and sheet metal workers), engine-drivers and firemen, fruitpickers, carters and drivers, builders’ labourers, coachmakers, timber workers, carpenters and joiners, rubber workers, liquor trades employees, tanning and leather and glass workers. Canberra Costs High. Further index figures issued by the Bureau of Statistics at Ganbena show that the retail price decline in the September quarter has been 02 points in Newcastle, hi in Broken Hill, 59 in Goulburn, 48 in Bathurst, and 50 in Sydney, ’the weigh ted average reduction is 52 points. The figures affect the operations of awards outside the metropolitan area. They indicate a reduction in (he Federal basic wage of 2s Od in awards which arc based on Ihe Harvester equivalent plus Ihe Powers 3s, and of 3s in awards based purely on the points system. Canberra, according to the figures, has had by far the largest cost of living reductions in the quarter.

namely 187 points; but its figure is still far higher Ilian that of any of I the other towns for which figures are given.