To the Editor of the "Norta-Cama Dairy News."
Sir,—I should esteem it a favour if you could kindly grant me a little space in your valuable paper to express' my sympathy with SM.C. employees. As a friend of a large'number of them, and knowing what I am talking about, I would venture to ask some of those ratepayers who so kindly held up their hands against increasing employees' wages, how they would exist on Tls. 150 per month, inclusive of all allowances? Granted that the ratepayer had good cause to reject the idea of the higher paid officials having an increase on the top of their already magnificent salaries. If the Counci] think it necessary to allow a man who 1s drawing a fabulous wage an allowance ai Tls. 200 for his house, how ey earth do they expect another man to live on Ts. 150-(with money deducted for Superannuation Fund), cut of which he has to pay rent, coal, light, food, clothing, etc.? All have to buy at the same. market, there being no open competition here, as at home.
Prices of food- have increased since September 100 per cent. and servants' wages have gone up. The only consolation has been an increase of wages looming in the distance. Now, after waiting 12 months for the Commission to pry into the whys and wherefores of wages, the whole scheme has fallen through. The Commission has cost tne ratepayers a sum of something like Ts. 5,000, which would have helped considerably toward the proposed rise of pay. When the Commission was appointed it was done se, I believe, to inquire into men's wage earnings of less than Tls. 300 a month. The higher paid official was not thought of. Instead, the Commission have been busying themselves as to how. they could improve the already overlaid high oficial. The lower grade men have been a second consideration.
When the proposed scheme was put before the ratepayers, it was started at the wrong end, getting their backs up and they, without thinking, rejected it wholesale. Now the lower grade men have to suffer for There has been correspondence going on, talking about S.M.C. employees and their advantages. True, they have advantages, but, with them all, the wages offered to the lower grade branches of the service are not, as things are now, sufficient to live on, what with rents being raised and foodstuffs going up every day. When people talk about S.M.C. wages, they have in their minds the pay of the higher officials, but I can assure them that the lower grade men have all their work cut out to make ends meet, to exist and keep out of debt.
Compare the wages. of the lower grade men here and men at home working in the same capacities and ratepayers will then see that 8.M.C, employees are asking for nothing out of reason, but only a decent living wage. Men coming all these miles from home and with all the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.