Standards Sought For Factories

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31449, 16 August 1967, Page 6

Standards Sought For Factories

Examination of legislation on factory registration was recommended to the executive of the New Zealand Furniture Manufacturers’ Federation by the federation’s annual conference yesterday.

Submissions should be made to the Labour Department to ensure scheduled minimum standards before registration and employment of staff, the conference said. Mr E. A. Miller (Auckland) said he was concerned that a man could start on his own and immediately he took on workers he could register as a factory. The man applied for registration as a factory and proceeded with his work before any examination was made by the factory inspector. Sometimes the man proceeded for a long time before his factory was brought up to the required standards of the appropriate act Because of this furniture manufacturers were concerned that a factory owner should be allowed to continue in business before his factory was brought up to standard.

Mr Miller said he felt that examinations by the factories inspector should be made before the employer was allowed to emplqy labour. Small employers were prone to say, “Well, this is good enough for a big employer,” but he could not afford it himself, and he

could not afford to bring his factory up to a high standard. Mr Miller said that he thought the federation should investigate the matter and ensure that the Labour Department did not approve of a factory until it reached an appropriate standard of cleanliness, dust extraction and machine guarding. The retiring president (Mr C. Renwick) said that there was a wide variation of factory standards. This problem had happened in Australia before the war. In Australia a factory had to be inspected before it could work.

If this was applied in New Zealand unions would support it because the unions did not like their members working in appalling standards.