Promise of full employment

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33654, 2 October 1974, Page 3

Promise of full employment

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, October 1. t he Minister of Works and former Minister of Labour ( Mr Watt) today gave an unqualified guarantee that regardless of how seriously the economic situation developed, full employment would be retained in New Zealand.

“This is the most important factor of the Government’s economic policy,” Mr Watt told the National Council of the Printers’ Union.

The policies taken almost universally to combat inflation were aimed towards reductions in internal demands and the creation of pools of unemployed, he said. Every individual had the right to a job, and the inherent right to work, and the Government would ensure those rights were retained by him. Last squeeze Mr Watt said that in 1967 when a situation less serious than the one the country faced today had developed, the previous administration had aimed to reduce internal spending and create a pool of 10,000 unemployed. Today’s situation deeply concerned the country, but the Government had watched developments closely and had acted decisively to adjust the economy to meet changing circumstances. The measures adopted had maintained employment and a reasonable growth rate and had held price inflation to a level below the average for developing countries, said Mr Watt. “The Government is confident that the measures taken have been right, and that our problems are only temporary. “An important part of our strategy is to ensure that internal incomes and prices are held as far as possible, and in this the co-operation of industrial groups is an im-

■portant factor,” Mr Watt said. So long as the country’s terms of trade deteriorated, there would also be an overall loss in effective incomes. “More for some” If one sector of the community obtained an income increase out of line with the increase in real resources, this could be done only at the expense of other sectors with less bargaining power, or who chose not to exercise that power.

i “Some sectors are receiving more than they deserve, and some not as much. During the last 20 months the Government has been trying to alter the direction and extent of the productivity distributed. It has been trying to maintain a balance in order to keep in perspective the vicious spiral of inflation,” said Mr Watt. “The rest of 1974 and 1975 do not look to be easy years. But trade unions have a guarantee that the Government will be looking after the interests of the working people. “We are not interested in the people who live off your backs but only in the people who work — they are the people who produce the wealth of the nation,” he said.