MANUFACTURE OF CLOTHING

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25309, 8 October 1947, Page 8

MANUFACTURE OF CLOTHING

LABOUR PROBLEM STILL SERIOUS

From Our Own Reporter HANMER SPRINGS, October 7.

“The task of organising production to meet one of the basic needs of the country is an important one, and it is equally important that the garment industry in all its branches is providing employment for about 17,000 persons,” stated the annual report of Mr J. J. Delahunt (vice-president) to the opening session of the New Zealand Council of Garment Manufacturers’ Federations in Hanmer Springs this evening. The Garment Council represented one of the largest groups of industry in New Zealand.

The industry used woollen raw materials produced in New Zealand, said Mr Delahunt, but it depended to a considerable extent on overseas countries to supply woollen and wotsted goods, cotton and rayon, and yarns. Changes in marketing • arrangements for cottons left New Zealand to compete on the open market for supplies. Woollen and worsted piece goods and yarns from the United Kingdom and Australia were still difficult to obtain. The effect of the dollar crisis on imports from the United States and Canada was not yet known. It was possible that import licences for a limited range of materials from Germany and Japan might be granted. Although production units had been decentralised to provincial towns, there was still a shortage of labour for garment manufacturing, particularly women, continued Mr Delahunt. “The council is perturbed about the extent to which staff is being attracted from many of the basic and essential industries to a number of other employing groups, including the Government, which to-day is branching out into a number of new fields with corresponding caP for extra staff. Greater efforts in building up the manpower of our industry are not only desirable but necessary. It is felt that industrial vocational training could receive much greater emphasis in th? present school curriculum.”