BACK TO WORK

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 82, 5 October 1915, Page 8

BACK TO WORK

SOLDIERS AFTER THE WAR LABOUR DEPARTMENT'S AID. In co-operation with the new Discharged Soldiers Information Department, the Labour Department will assist in the task of finding employment for returned soldiers who are able-bodied. In an official statement recently, the * new Department announced that the Secretary for Labour, Mr. F. W. Rowley, had expressed himself as being more thah anxious to place .the whole strength of his organisation at the service of the Discharged Soldiers Information Office. The main burden of finding suitable work for returned men would in course of time, it appeared, devolve upon the Labour Department. If, as the work of the Department developed, it was found advisable, a central committee might be established in Wellington to assist in the solution of difficult problems. On this committee might be gentlemen closely connected with State employment, also others outside the service representing the principal local bodies employing much labour or already interested in movements of the kind. At present the Labour Department has much to do with the soldier — the potential recruit, the waiting recruit, and the man who has been discharged through no fault of his own. It has to see that single men are not unduly encouraged to stay behind by being offered employment when married men can do the work, especially when the jobs sought have been vacated by men who heard the call of duty. When a man has enlisted, work has often to be found for him until he is called to go into camp ; and sometimes he comes to the Department again without having seen active service, the camp life having revealed some bodily weakness. For dealing with these problems the Department has already a wide organisation. In every district and in every town of importance it has branches or agents, whose duty it is to see, in co-operation with the head office, that unemployment is reduced as much as possible, and that employers have what labour they require. Experience has undoubtedly added to the efficiency of these operations. The Department's officers know the man who Is always looking for a job, although he may travel about from one end of New Zealand to the other, and what is wrong with his eyesight. Also, they know the employer who cannot keep his hands, and why. So far as assisting returned soldiere to employment is concerned, the Department appears to have all the 'machinery and all the experience. It knows where labour is required at certain seasons and where to find it. It knows the wage that should be paid, and the trouble that is ( likely to follow if a psuedophilanthropist offers an easy position at something less than he ought to pay — "just to do something for our heroes." It may be mentioned that this class of employer is not unknown — the man who will get handsome value from a. ' ' down-and-outer" and consider he has done a kind act. A special committee which recently considered means and methods of helping discharged soldiers in Britain emphasised in its report, which was summarised in The Post, the importance of using existing departments instead of creating new offices to deal with work which was not of a permanent character, and it is the expressed intention of the New Zealand Government to utilise similarly such machinery as already exists in this Dominion.