Labour Market Under Pressure

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 21

Labour Market Under Pressure

(New Zealand Preu Auociation)

WELLINGTON, March 23.

Unless the Government eases its pressure on the labour market for national undertakings it will do the country more harm than good, Mr L. V. Etwell, president of the New Zealand Carriers’ Federation, said in a supplied statement.

“The decision to agree to the importation of Italian workers for the Tongariro tunnelling jobs is based on the lack of rock-drilling skills in New Zealand,” he said. “In all other respects the Government has set its face against an increased inflow of immigrant labour, yet it persists with a schedule of major projects which leave the country’s manpower resources heavily over-commit-ted.” Mr Etwell said New Zealanders were told that immigration was inflationary, but it was suspected that the present unprecedented demand for labour was equally inflationary—either way the whole country was suffering through lack of labour and through having to pay a highly inflated price for what there was, and this was at a time when overseas market realisations did not permit indulgences in extravagances at home.

“Some of the undertakings to which the Government is committed are essential to national development the Tongariro project probably falls into this category—but there are others which the country neither needs nor can afford in terms of manpower resources,” said Mr Etwell“The proposed £5,700,000 Kaimai railway tunnel is a typical extravagance into which the Government has been talked. “In times of abundant money and manpower, it could possibly, but only possibly, be justified. But while the

country strains its resources to cover the absolutely essential projects, the Kaimai tunnel is neither necessary nor even desirable.

“The greatest worry to private enterprise, a philosophy to which the present Government claims to subscribe, is that too high a proportion of the available manpower is going to state projects. ’ “Either the Government must absorb less of our manpower or it must give us more through increased immigration,” he said.