MINISTER'S REPLY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 59, 10 March 1945, Page 6

MINISTER'S REPLY

TO BUILDERS' FEDERATION

TRAINING OF SERVICEMEN

P.A. WELLINGTON, 6 Friday, j "The New Zealand Builders' Federation condemns itself out of its own mouth," said the Minister of Rehabilitation, Mr. Skinner, to-day, in commenting on a statement by Mr W. J. Mountjoy, secretary of the Federated Builders and Contractors' Industrial Association of Employers, concerning the training of ex-servicemen as carpenters. "First of all," Mr. Skinner said, "thev deny having been offered an opportunity to train ex-servicemen for an extra period in the carpentry trade, then in the same statement thev admit having discussed the whole matter with the Rehabilitation Board. . "We certainly offered private employers the task of finishing off the training in carpentry of exservicemen, but when they put forward their terms formally we decided the terms were unreasonable— as would anyone else who read them in the federation's statement, employers of all classes must remember that they have an obligation collectively and individually in the rehabilitation of these men, and it is not too much to ask that they carry the trainees a little at the start.

"It would only be common justice," the Minister claimed, if the employers were asked to pay 100 per cent award wages throughout the training period, but we considered it a fair thing to share the cost with a reasonable subsidy in the earlier stages. I still stand by the standard of training we have to offer in our training centres. It satisfied the State Housing Construction Department, whose standards are the highest in the Dominion.

"I am sure no private employer can afford the time and expense to provide the theoretical groundwork necessary to enable an ex-serviceman to rise eventually above the standard of a labourer," said the Minister, "and that, is the keynote of the whole rehabilitation scheme. A recent survey showed that employers all over the Dominion considered that 96 per cent of the ex-service-men trainees were satisfactory tradesmen after a year's training, so lack of merit in the federation's case is obvious."