NATIONAL AIMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 66, 15 September 1943, Page 5

NATIONAL AIMS

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

P.A. OAMARU, September 14. Tonight the Leader of the National Party, Mr. Holland, addressed the largest and most enthusiastic political meeting held at Oamaru so far in this election campaign. He dealt fully with the question of decentralisation, saying the country had lost its industrial balance. There were too many unskilled workers and too few skilled craftsmen and tradesmen doing jobs to build homes for the people. There was a shortage of 70,000 houses for the present population. When the servicemen returned from overseas nothing could be more useful than to train them so that they could build homes for themselves. They would be entitled to well-paid creative employment. The National Party proposed to set up an organisation to <train returned men in the employment of their own choice. Mr. Holland dealt with industrial relations, saying they would never get anywhere while a gulf existed between employer and worker. They must remove from the mind of the worker the idea that the employer was his enemy and from the mind of the employer that the worker wanted to do as little as he could for as big a reward as he could get. Ninety-five per cent, of the workers were decent, honest men and women anxious to do a fair day's work for a fair day's wage, but the trouble lay with the 5 per cent, of imported industrial troublemakers whose only success was in destroying the success of others.

The National Party proposed to remove the causes of industrial troubles by the establishment of an industrial harmony bureau to investigate the causes of troubles. They also proposed a system of co-operative schemes to increase the rewards of industry.