Absenteeism

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25083, 15 January 1947, Page 6

Absenteeism

A small but disturbing paragraph in “ The Press ” yesterday recorded that factories in Christchurch (according to the secretary of the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association) had opened aftej the Christmas and New Year holidays with an average attendance of about 90 per cent, of workers. Though the figure is an improvement on last year’s, there is nothing particularly creditable about that. It simply means that workers are taking advantage of a situation in which there is a greater demand for labour than the supply to make their own terms of employment; and those terms are flagrantly dishonest when they have enjoyed a reasonable and indeed generous holiday on full pay. Factories which recommenced work in the previous week recorded attendance figures which can only be described as disgraceful, since the average was only 40 per cent, on Thursday and 50 per cent, on Friday; and one employer had to record that the rate of absenteeism among his female workers was the highest he had ever experienced. It is pleasing, to an extent, that “ most “factories had practically a full attendance of male employees”; but “ most ” and ° practically ” are not enough. There is no reason, barring illness or other unavoidable and sufficient causes, why the attendance should not be 100 per cent., especially at a time when full production is so urgently required. Women employees, however, are responsible for the greater proportion of the absenteeism; and there is no more justification for them than there is for the men. Most of them are making good money, more easily than they have ever made it; and in the types of manufacture in which they are mostly engaged the need for increased and steady production has never been more imperative. There has never been a greater need, for example, for increased production of clothing and clothing materials. The whole community, including returned servicemen, who have been unable to obtain adequate supplies of clothing, is feeling the pinch of shortages which could be supplied by workers with a sense of responsibility. This appears to be sadly lacking in far too large a proportion of the women

(mostly young women) engaged in these trades. It might be as well for them to remember that their position may not always be as happy as it is to-day. It will be less happy if employers remember, in times when the supply of labour exceeds the demand, employees who were faithful to their duty in more prosperous days.