Minister Asked To Warn Migrants

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31385, 2 June 1967, Page 1

Minister Asked To Warn Migrants

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 1. The Minister <rf Immigration (Mr Shand) has been asked to stop the immigration of building tradesmen.

Mr A. Russ, the Auckland secretary of the Carpenters’ Union, said tonight that he had sent a telegram to this effect to Mr Shand. Under the present economic difficulties, building tradesmen coming to New Zealand would face unemployment. “There is no possibility of his getting employment, at least in Auckland,” he said. Mr Russ has also sent a telegram to the Minister of Finance (Mr Muldoon), who was reported to have said he could see no widespread difficulties in store for the industry in view of the increased value of building permits issued this year. In the telegram Mr Russ said: “The industry is suffering from serious difficulties and we may ask that your department canvass building jobs to ascertain for itself that in fact unemployment does exist”

It was reported today that 43 timber workers employed by Henderson and Pollard, ltd., at Mt. Eden, had been laid off, 16 men who worked for W. H. Whittaker and Company, Auckland, had been made redundant, and H. G. Foster, Ltd., a Whangarei subsidiary of Henderson and Pollard, had put its 16 joiners on a four-day week. Mr N. E. Pollard, the general manager of Henderson and Pollard, said men from his firm's Auckland staff were laid off this week when the company stopped working its double shift system in the plywood section. The better of the two shifts was kept on. The 16 joiners at H. G. Foster, Ltd., a Henderson and Pollard subsidiary, had agreed to go on a four-day week to prevent some of them being dismissed, he said.