Chch factory to close

Press, 21 June 1977, Page 6

Chch factory to close

( A Christchurch precision (engineering firm has closed down because of a shortage of toolmakers. The firm is Manders Precision Engineering, of Addington, which has been making tools and casting dies for the last 10 years, with a staff of about 10.

Its managing director (Mr P. Mander) said that the emiployees had been found al--1 ternative jobs and that he (would continue to operate; (from the premises on his own account as a precision engineer and gunsmith. However, his diemaking business would cease from this week. All the plant has been sold, piece by piece.

Mr Mander said that the company’s last project was the making of injection mouldings for a sensor unit for the blind, and no other firm in Christchurch could have made such specialised devices. He said that he had written to a number of countries for skilled tradesmen but had had no response. “People didn’t want, to come because the conditions (were not right,” he said. i Mr Mander said that there was a big demand for skilled Itoolmakers in New Zealand but they were not paid enough. A tradesman with an advanced trade certificate received $145 a week gross and with overtime $l7O a week gross, but by the time I

■ tax was taken off he was not i earning much more than a i labourer. t “I wouldn’t go and work • for someone for less than 1 $4 an hour,” said Mr Mani der. “If a labourer is getting $lOO a week in the hand, ■ a toolmaker should get ■ $200,” he said. i Asked what he saw as the solution to the problem, Mr i Mander said that the Govern- ' ment and employers should get together and work out a ‘ scheme whereby tradesmen I either got higher wages or ! were taxed less. ! He said that incentives should be given to trades- ; men at a time when New - Zealand was trying to diversify and build up its in1 dustries.