FIFTY WORKERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 192, 16 August 1939, Page 10

FIFTY WORKERS.

ENGLISH TRADESMEN.

DUE NEXT WEDNESDAY.

ENGAGED BY GO

Fifty more English building tradesmen engaged by the New Zealand Government are expected to arrive in Auckland on Wednesday in the Rangitane. The men will all be drafted to Wellington, where 150 others have already arrived in the past few months.

It is to combat the shortage of skilled New Zealand tradesmen that these workers are being brought to the Dominion. A total of 384 were similarly "imported" from Australia, mainly to allow better progress to be made with the State housing scheme. The Government gives assistance by advancing passage money.

In the meantime, the influx of independent job-seekers jnto the country has continued at a fairly steady rate. About ten such men arrived at Auckland from Australia in the Wanganella this morning. They included a farm labourer, a solid plasterer, an iron moulder and two carpenters, all of whom, provided they are skilled at their jobs, are not thought likely to experience much difficulty in finding employment.

At least four of the number, however, are understood to be general labourers —and employment circles hold that workers of this class are running a considerable risk in coming here purely on speculation.

'"In the past few months there has been a somewhat alarming drift of unskilled men to New Zealand from overseas," one employer said to-day. '"Reports of higher wages and ljetter conditions generally have apparently prompted them to try to make a fresh start here, but I cannot describe the prospects for every such man as bright. New Zealand has enough general labour of its own."

It was also stated that the task of transferring men from public works to industry would not be made easier by any appreciable addition to the ranks of the Dominion's unskilled workers.