Praise For Skill Of Australian Workers

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28155, 19 December 1956, Page 11

Praise For Skill Of Australian Workers

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, Before returning to England after three years in Australia, a British engineering expert paid a high tribute to the standard and skill of Australian workers with whom he was associated. He is Mr A. H. Harvey-Bailey, manager and chief engineer of Rolls Royce of Australia, Pty. Ltd.

Mr Harvey-Bailey said that 97 per cent, of the skilled workers employed by Rolls Royce in Australia had been engaged and trained here. “We have had no industrial trouble of any kind since we began operations in Australia in 1953,” he said. “When we have wanted any special effort from the men they have always co-operated with us. They are an excellent bunch of men and I’m sorry to be leaving them.”

He said he believed the secret of the company’s good staff relations was the application of good management to Australian labour.

Mr Harvey-Bailey arrived in Australia in 1953 to establish the Rolls Royce company’s £1,250,000 “aerial garage” at Kingsford Smith airport at Mascot. The plant overhauls and maintains Rolls Royce engines in commercial airliners operating in Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia. It also overhauls and maintains Rolls Royce Avon jet engines in R.A.A.F. Canberra bombers and Sabre jet fighters Mr Harvey-Bailey said the company proposed to use its establishment in Australia as a “springboard” to New Zealand and the Far East. He added that the aeronautical industry today was of particular importance to Britain. She no longer possessed a string of colonies and had to rely upon “the skill of her own hands” to earn export income. The aeronautical industry provided her with the means of earning a large income from a minimum of financial outlay.