RATEPAYERS BLAMED

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20213, 5 June 1937, Page 8

RATEPAYERS BLAMED

DISMISSAL OF WORKERS. £IOO,OOO LOAN REFUSED. LABOUR MEMBER'S CRITICISM. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) DUNEDIN, Saturday. The cause of 104 employees of the City Corporation being dismisse’d from the works and water departments was directly attributed this morning by Mr J. W. Munro, M.P., to the defeat of the £IOO,OOO loan proposal at the recent poll. “With the assistance of vicious newspaper propaganda and misleading statements from the Ratepayers’ Committee the ratepayers deliberately vote’d against the loan so that the council would not be able to assist the Government in finding work for the unemployed during the winter,” he said. “The adoption of the proposal would not only have’ enabled the council to retain the services of the men dismissed but probably would have permitted the employment of anothe’r 100 men.” The Town Clerk stated that the men paid off were not strictly pe’rmanents but were really additions to the staff, those engaged by the water department being subsidised workers. The main grievance expressed by the dismissed men is that they have to stand down two weeks before they are eligible for sustenance. Efforts have been made to induce the Government to waive this regulation but this would involve a waiver throughout New Zealand, the Hon. F. Jones, Minister of Defence, pointed out. Altogether 104 employee's of the Dunedin City Council were discharged during the week from the works and water departments of the council, because the rate of expenditure in these departments is growing beyond the financial provision for the year. Sixtyfour men employed in the water department received notice last Monday, and 40 men were discharged from the works department as from to-day.