Workers Moving In Search For Jobs

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31407, 28 June 1967, Page 1

Workers Moving In Search For Jobs

The Government departments in which 1600 relief jobs had been ear-marked included forestry, railways and the Post Office, said the Secretary of Labour (Mr N. S. Woods) in a telephone interview.

He said these were departments in which it was normal in other years to provide relief work. It would be given again this year.

The Ministry of Works usually provided some relief jobs but he could not say how many this year, he said.

Asked which were the other eight or nine Government departments where relief work was being offered this winter, Mr Woods said that his department could not indicate the locations or the departments.

This was because the Department of Labour did not want many people endeavouring to reach these places on their own initiative only to find jobs had been allocated. Mr Woods said the Labour Department wished to safeguard people who were unfortunate enough to be unemployed. They might be tempted to make long journeys unthinkingly. One Christchurch trade union leader said that some

unemployed were on the move. Freezing workers from Southland were trying to get jobs in Christchurch.

They were being advised to continue to their North Island home towns. Many of the freezing workers engaged in Southland in the killing season came from the North Island.

Some Wellington unemployed had come to Christchurch in the hope of finding jobs easier to get. Most had been unsuccessful and they had been advised to return to Wellington. The secretary of the Canterbury Freezing Workers’ Union (Mr S. Arnst) said that the 1600 ear marked relief jobs would not cope with the unemployed. “The number of unemployed freezing workers will continue to grow in the next two weeks. I hope that within the next week or fortnight, the number of relief jobs to be made available by the

Government will be at least doubled.

“Our freezing workers are finding it soul-destroying to be out of work.” Mr Arnst said that trade unions found it pleasing to see the easing of building controls in Christchurch. But it was hard to see how much lifting of controls would be effective, because of the 10 per cent reduction of bank overdrafts.