KEEPING UP PRODUCTION

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23536, 14 January 1942, Page 3

KEEPING UP PRODUCTION

0 REGISTRATION OF WORKERS SUGGESTED ‘‘Men and women throughout the country should be registered and classified where they can give the best service for the country,” said Mr G. A. Gilchrist, secretary of Lane, Walker, and Rudkin. Ltd., and president of the Ashburton Chamber of Commerce, yesterday, when speaking of the labour position and war needs for manpower. “This has been done in England, and is being done in Australia, and there is every reason for the system to be adopted in New Zealand. Such a classification which should have been undertaken long ago, would show what manpower was available after the needs of the armed forces had been met. Industry will be badly, disorganised if something of this sort is not done,” Mr Gilchrist continued. He said it would be difficult to keep up production to a peak required by the Government if men were taken from industry at the rate indicated by the general mobilisation this month. The general mobilisation this month would affect 36 men employed at the Ashburton woollen mills, seven of them having been rejected as medically unfit for overseas service, but there was no guarantee that they were not fit for home defence. The mills had advertised for workers to fill the place of men who had gone into camp, but had not received any response, and this positign would become worse as time went on. Under the classification scheme, workers could be -drafted into the mills to do the necessary work.