THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 1978. Employment in building

Press, 14 June 1978, Page 18

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 1978. Employment in building

The admission by several builders interviewed this week that uneconomic tenders are being submitted “by a wide range of builders in all classes of work” in Christchurch should come as no surprise The big increases in costs in recent years have not been matched by comparable increases in either the purchasing power of the industry’s customers, or in the real need for houses, commercial buildings, or industrial premises. Until effective demmd recovers there is little prospect of any real improvement in activity in the building industry

The appeal by the Canterbury Master Builders and Joiners’ Association, supported by the Carpenters’ Union, to the Christchurch public to bring forward any planned building projects deserves to be heeded Despite the current recession, many firms are still in a position to commission a new building. Plans for a factory, warehouse, or extensions, deferred from palmier days, might well be re-examined in the light of today’s more competitive tendering conditions. Investment in a new factory this year might well prove to be the springboard for future expansion.

Government departments and local bodies have already been approached at various levels by representatives of the building industry to bring forward

buildings and construction projects. The present plight of the building industry is no excuse for profligate expenditure of taxpayers’ or ratepayers’ money, but the authorities should heed the pleas of the industry’ to expedite schemes already approved—particularly schemes which have been shelved in recent years because of builders’ commitments to more profitable work for the private sector.

Without further Government assistance there will almost certainly be more bankruptcies and unemployment in the building industry before long. Imaginative measures, which may not prove to be very expensive when they are eventually phased out, should be under consideration right now. An extra appropriation of, say, $lO million would enable the Housing Corporation to buy up several hundred of the unsold houses and flats (preferably in Auckland and Christchurch, where the surplus is greatest). These dwellings might be let in the meantime by the corporation, and eventually sold. The injection of cash into the industry would at least relieve some builders, and their financial backers, of their current liquidity problems. It should also prevent or postpone the imminent dismissal of scores or hundreds of workers in the building trades.