Rubber Workers Oppose Removal Of Controls

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31627, 13 March 1968, Page 19

Rubber Workers Oppose Removal Of Controls

The Canterbury Rubber Workers’ Union will protest against the Government’s plans to abolish import controls, to the degree where the union says the jobs of rubber workers could become insecure or disappear. A general meeting of the union carried a resolution viewing with alarm recent statements by the Cabinet and others about the intention to drop import controls. The resolution called on the Government to ensure that changes in policy on imports would not create “a sacrificial altar on which the welfare of rubber workers end their families would be thrown to satisfy the desires of the political gods.”

The secretary (Mr T. C. Fletcher) told the meeting that some articles made in New Zealand plants were available to the consumer today at the same price as the imported article cost in 1948. “The same articles have lost nothing in quality since being made in New Zealand.” he said. Mr Fletcher said what the union was asking was little enough. “There is nothing in it for anyone, not even the Government, if by activating certain policies their only effect is to swell the already too high ranks of unemployed workers by adding rubber workers,” he said.