Employment

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24278, 8 June 1944, Page 4

Employment

The Associated Chambers of Commerce have reason enough to distrust the Government’s ambitions and prejudices it the control of industry and trade, which means the control of employment; but in the statement reported on Tuesday, interpreting a remark attributed to the Hon. W. Nash, distrust seems to have carried interpretation and protest astray. Mr Nash is reported to have said that the men fighting this war would “never again be “satisfied to depend on people or “ companies kind enough to give “ them jobs. They would deny any- “ body’s right to decide whether “ they would get jobs or not. ’ The Associated Chambers see here the “ provocative ” suggestion that there exists some “ body of opinion, a collection of “ interests ” opposed to the general wish and resolve to “ do the utmost “for the country’s returned fighting “men.” Again, the Associated Chambers find something “dispar- “ aging ” in Mr Nash’s reference to “jobs provided by companies and “ other people ’’ and proceed from that to the “plain inference” that New Zealand employers are “not to “be looked to—or perhaps not al- “ lowed—to take returned men into “' their employment.” The suggestion, the discovery, and the inference, however, seem to be nervous fancies. Mr Nash’s words do not afford them any substance, since they state, after all, no more tha'n the principle that the returned men shall have (like everyone else) the “ right ” to employment, a principle lo which the National Party as well as the Labour Party adheres. It means that a man shall not, if conditions become difficult, have to depend on the kindness of individuals or companies to stretch their staffs and their payrolls. It means that a man shall not have to depend, m any conditions, on some decision, public or private to create employment for him. It means, alternatively, that public and private enterprise will jointly have to accept and pursue the policy of full emIplcyment; and the Associated Chambers of Commerce will no more dissent from this than will the Trades Hall. But if the cause of

their misapprehension, and apprehension, is searched out, it is a fundamentally reasonable one. The prejudices of the Government in favour of State enterprise are deeprooted. Its addiction to heavyhanded and intricate restraints upon private enterprise is chronic. It is approaching the difficult period of economic reconstruction with an alarming indifference to the need for close co-operation with private enterprise, while plans of action are prepared, and when they are put into execution.- These are all danger signs, so obvious, and so urgently deserving attention, that it is a pity to waste time in detecting bogies at Ottawa