LABOUR BUSY

Evening Star, Issue 22229, 6 January 1936, Page 6

LABOUR BUSY

CONFERENCE WITH PUBLIC WORKS ENGINEERS

GOOD CONDITIONS AND GOOD WORK REQUIRED

[Special to the ‘ Star.’]

WELLINGTON, January 6. Public Works district engineers from all parts of the Dominion are to meet the Minister of Works, Mr Semple, in conference shortly. “ The subject, ’ said the Minister, “is to discuss reading, railway construction, and all other types of work under their jurisdiction. I want to get information about the needs of their districts, the numbers of men employed, the rates of pay and working conditions, and the type of plant employed. It is useless using obsolete tools, hopeless from the engineer’s efficiency viewpoint, and heartbreaking to the men concerned. We must adopt modern methods on big jobs. The conference will secure a common understanding on the methods of carrying out public works, and complete co-ordination upon the national policy. We also will get a common understanding how the men are to be treated on the job, making it possible for the engineers to give the best in them and giving the men the encouragement necessary to give the best in them also. These are the conditions making for efficiency which we expect and will demand. There will be no sleeping on the job. Hard work hurts no one, and a man will feel more like a citizen if he has earned his wages. I know what men can do, and I will not demand the impossible, and will do the fair thing.” Mr Semple, in his capacity as Minister of Transport, is also Calling a conference of all transport interests. The whole question, he says, bristles with difficulty, and must be straightened out, and not behind closed doors.