MOST BUILDERS AT WORK ON HOUSES

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31384, 1 June 1967, Page 1

MOST BUILDERS AT WORK ON HOUSES

The two office buildings, worth £500,000, that the Government Building Programmer (Mr R. F. Paris) announced would start this year, would provide work for only two of 30 Christchurch builders engaged in commercial work, said the executive officer of the Canterbury Master Builders’ Association (Mr C. M. Wishart) yesterday.

Mr Wishart said that there were abcut 600 builders in Christchurch of whom the vast majority were engaged in cottage work. The secretary of the Canterbury Carpenters’ Union {Mr R. J. Pitcairn) said that the great majority of carpenters in Christchurch were engaged in house work. A decline in finance for house loans and a consequent reduction in house building, would cause the greatest unemployment among Christi church carpenters. Mr Pitcairn said that while large construction jobs played an important role in the employment of carpenters, it was the flow of house building that had to be watched closely.

iment of carpenters in Christchurch, a continuity of small {commercial contracts and house building, as well as the large commercial contracts, was needed. Mr Pitcairn said that even when things were busy in the Christchurch building industry, there were not normally more than about five or six large commercial contracts.

“Any major recession in the I; employment of carpenters in i Christchurch is likely to come;< from a decline in house build- 1 ing,” said Mr Pitcairn. He said that a £400,000 com- ■ mercial building contract—the bigger of the two an- 1 nounced by Mr Paris —would ' not employ more than about 15 carpenters. To maintain full employ-