SHORTAGE OF SHIRTS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 25031, 13 November 1946, Page 6

SHORTAGE OF SHIRTS

PRICE TRIBUNAL BLAMED ‘♦MANUFACTURERS FORCED TO GIVE UP PRODUCTION” (P.A ) WELLINGTON, November 12. Manufacturers were being forced to give up the production of shirts because the Price Tribunal policy prevented them from competing adequately for labour, said Mr J. Abel, president of the New Zealand Shirt and Pyjama Manufacturers’ Federation, to-night. Mr Abel said the number of popular neglige style shirts with separate collar being produced in Wellington was infinitesimal compared with the capacity of the plant and materials available. These shirts were, in urgent demand, but while the Price Tribunal continued its present policy the shortage could only grow more acute. He spoke in reply to the statement of IMr P. G. Connolly, Labour candidate for Dunedin Central, who declared that private enterprise had fallen down on the job, and that the time was ripe for the Government to enter the shirt-making business. Mr Abel said Mr Connolly had apparently seen fit to overlook the fact that private enterprise in the shirt trade had not failed the Government throughout the whole of the war period, making not only all of the shirts requested for all branches of the New Zealand services but, in addition, making them for Allied forces. Private enterprise in the shirt trade would still be delivering the goods were it not for the uneconomic prices allowed by the Price Tribunal, such priceg gs would not the shirt trade to compete for female labour with luxury and non-essential industries.

“Th« shirt trade has the brains, machinery, and material, and if Mr Connolly would exert some of his energies in investigating with the Price Tribunal as to why manufacturers have given up the production of shirts he need not urge the Government to encroach still further on private enterprise,” Mr Abel concluded.