ORDER OF URGENCY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 50, 28 February 1942, Page 6

ORDER OF URGENCY

The difficulty the Wellington Hospital Board faces in building the Hutt hospital is exactly the trouble against which the Minister of Housing gave a warning recently when he said it was either co-opera-tion or stupid competition for the labour available. There was not enough for all the work. Skilled labour on the hospital job is being lost, presumably because more attractive conditions, including \\jages I above award rates, are offered elsewhere. The Hospital Board wishes to see the hospital finished, and its completion is undoubtedly urgent as a war job, for it is imperative that there should be spare beds for casualty cases. At present this provision has to be made by deferring many less urgent cases. But if the board, to keep up the speed of the job, pays higher rates it will be participating in and encouraging competition. There will be an auction for the labour available. Some members of the board consider, and we think rightly so, that a public body should not take this course, and should not help to destroy the stability that is the Government's policy. But it is clear that the correction can be applied only by the Government. Either the essential industry regulations must be invoked to check'transfers without permission or else the permitted work must be limited to what can be carried out with the labour available. The latter course appears preferable. As we pointed out recently most of the work now being done is either for the Government or for local authorities! associated with the Government. The private competition is a smaller1 factor. Surely various Government or semi-Government activities should not compete with each other. That is the sort of thing we deride as the product of ineptitude when we see it in other countries. The clever planners blame it on "the old school tie," but evidently it is happening here. Is it not time that the Government, with its ample authority, fixed an order of urgency to stop the "stupid competition."