Range Of Labour

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28805, 28 January 1959, Page 14

Range Of Labour

One indication of the scope of the plastics industry can be found in a list of trade union awards covering workers who are employed by the industry. These are a few of them: metal trade employees, storemen and packers, motor and horse drivers, glass workers, factory engineers, brush and broom workers, bag makers; clothing trade employees, shirt and silk workers, and rubber and electrical workers. Wages paid by 43 manufacturers in 1955-56 were £505,363. Even the Department of Industries and Commerce say®., that

there is a list of “some 160 of the industry’s products (but) it does not catalogue them fully." “Plastics are now so widely applied, and have become so

much a part of domestic and industrial life, that it is difficult to draw up any really complete catalogue of their applications,” the department says. In the main, plastics are applied wherever wood, natural fibres, metal, ceramics and glass have been used in the past, except to provide cutting edges and for unit-shaving to withstand direct or sustained heat. Even so, plastic press tools for metal shaping have been tested by a British engineering firm, while a plastic which may be sterilised by boiling is in production in America. Major classes of goods produced by the New Zealand industry are hardware, kitchen and tableware and domestic utensils, toiletware, apparel, sporting requisites and toys, closures and stoppers, pipe and tube, trade containers, bottles, jars and bags. A number of units undertake moulding to clients’ specifications and provide a useful advisory service to industry.