Work Transfer “No Help”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31676, 11 May 1968, Page 1

Work Transfer “No Help”

<N«w Zealand Preee Auociation) WELLINGTON, May 10.

The trantfer of work from railway workshops to private industry would not alleviate the unemployment situation, said the Minister of Railways (Mr Gordon) today.

“If any work now programmed for the railway workshops was diverted to outside industry, then would be no alternative but to reduce railway staff," he said. Mr Gordon was commenting on a claim by the director of the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association (Mr R. T. Alston) that some of the railway waggons recently ordered from Jugoslavia should have been manufactured in Christchurch to give relief to the depressed heavy engineering industry there. Mr Gordon said that a Christchurch consortium of manufacturers had tendered for the assembly and construction of railway waggons

from material to be supplied by the Railways Department, not for the supply of materials and components as called for.

In fact many of the waggons to be supplied by Jugoslavia would be made in Christchurch, at the Addington railway workshops. “It is incorrect to suggest as Mr Alston appears to have done, that the department is importing railway waggons from Jugoslavia. It is the materials and components that are being imported to enable the waggons to be constructed in New Zealand,” he said.

Deliveries <rf material were programmed to ensure a continuous flow of work for the existing staff on a 40-hour production week.