LACK OF LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1941, Page 8

LACK OF LABOUR

AUSTRALIAN PROBLEM

SURVEY TO BE MADE

MUNITION WORK

(By Air Mail—From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, March 29. Australia is seeking the best meani of organising its rhan-poAver to obtain a maximum Avar effort. Already a serious lack of skilled labour is presenting a problem for the war industries and fighting services, and the position will become more acute as new projects are developed.

In the first half of this year a further 75,000 workers will be required for new munition and aircraft factories and about 10,000 for the new armoured division. One-third of these Avill need to be trained technicians.

To gain temporary relief, the Federal Government proposes to withdraw between 15,000 and 20.000 skilled artisans and key industrial men from the A.1.F., militia, Air Force, and Navy. The difficulty Avill be to decide which men would be more essential in industry than in the serAaces. A census bureau has been established to catalogue the civilian occupations of every man in the fighting services. It will tabulate the number of skilled and semi-skilled men Avho have enlisted, the degree of skill attained by the semi-skilled men before enlistment, and the amount of additional training the semi-skilled men Avould need to make them 100 per cent, efficient.

Bureau investigators are using the national register compiled before the Avar as a basis for their census. The census Avill be taken in Australia first. Later it will be extended to troops serving in the three services overseas. With the census completed, the Government will haA^e a record for use during hostilities and for repatriation purposes after the Avar. COMMITTEE INQUIRING. With a view to exploiting fully the country's man-power and the potential production of factories a Federal Parliamentary Man-power Committee is examining key witnesses in Avar industries. It will be weeks before the committee's inquiry will be completed, but already it has reached the conclusion that under the existing systems there is little hope of the complete absorption of much unemployed unskilled labour. It is likely to propose an unprecedented scale of mass production to make full use of existing factories, large and small, and the redistribution of skilled labour.

Cases submitted to the committee have shown that some skilled men are being used on jobs in which their skill is turned to account for only portion of their working time. At the same time, no adequate provision is being made for the absorption of physically fit unemployed.

There is a possibility that the committee will decide to recommend to the Government that it should concentrate on training process Avorkers by permitting them to watch in factories the jobs which they will be called on to undertake, instead of giving them a hurried technical training. This Avould possibly necessitate a Federal subsidy to employers in respect of the wages of men put into factories to Avaich until they are competent. With more process work done, it would become more practicable to use the resources of small and country industrial plants, and thus the committee's known desire to encourage the decentralisation of war industry would be assisted.