ECONOMIC FUTURE OF DOMINION

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24982, 17 September 1946, Page 8

ECONOMIC FUTURE OF DOMINION

PLEA BY EMPLOYERS’ PRESIDENT

His belief that New Zealand’s economic future was in the hands of employers, and that it could be jeopardised if they acted unwisely, was expressed by Mr C. S. Peate, president of the Canterbury Employers’ Association, when he spoke on human relationships at the annual meeting of the association yesterday. Mr Peate made a plea for united action by employers to achieve harmonious staff or human relationships, and thus best productive effort and service to the public. Speaking of the employers’ ethical ana economic obligations, he urged employers to try to improve conditions always in factories and offices, to treat employees as a valuable part of the business or industrial undertaking, to be punctilious about the settlement of grievances, to study individual employees’ reactions so that optimum service could be obtained, to ensure that the workers had - sense pf security, and to see that they, the'employers, were leaders. Employers, Mr Peate said, should also ensure that they gave good quality in goods or services. He did not mean giving quality goods at no profit—capital was entitled to its reward —but that employers should ensure that they were dealing fairly with the public. Other points emphasised were that while an objection should not be raised to the employee seeking a higher wage or trying to improve his position, any wage increase should be related to a production increase; that the alternative to hard work was hard times; that unions were at the crossroads where the type of guidance could make the difference of untold good or untold harm; and that there should be united effort by private enterprise, with the employer leading the way to maximum employee co-operation.