A PRACTICAL SYSTEM

Evening Star, Issue 22413, 10 August 1936, Page 2

A PRACTICAL SYSTEM

TRIBUTES TO PLACEMENT SCHEME FROM EMPLOYERS AND MEN (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, August 9. Amongst numerous letters received by the Employment Division of the Labour Department regarding the scheme for placing unemployed men in private employment, a good proportion have been from employers whose doubts as to its efficacy appear to have been dispelled by their personal experience and the incontrovertible logic of the placement figures. “This is the logical way of making the most of the labour available,” asserted a leading contractor in the Wanganui district. “It will ultimately save the situation.” He is evidently prepared to give practical proof of his faith, for he ended his letter —“ Send me three carpenters when you can.” Equally convinced is a wholesale cabinet maker, who declared: “I never dreamed that there was such a practical and efficient system in operation. As soon as you have them, send me three cabinetmakers and one good machinist.”

Every class of employer in the community may claim the help of the placement officers in obtaining labour, and many farmers are among those who have benefited from this assistance.

One of them put his thoughts on paper, thus: “This is a great thing for the fanner. Never before have wo been able to get certified labour. 1 have promoted the young fellow .you sent me a month ago; send me another to take his place.” It is as simple as that!

The unemployed also appear to have been watching witli interest the development of this scheme from its initial record of placements to its latest impressive total of 3,061, 1,672 of are now in permanent positions. “ This is the first practical attempt to reduce unemployment by helping a man back to his pre-slump position,” writes one of these observers. “It appears wonderfully complete in every way, end the men are pinning their faith in it.” The psychological angle is revealed in thia extract from the letter of a man who, after several years on relief, had begun to despair: “ It gives us heart to go on when we know that a practical attempt is being made to get men back to their trades.” The revival of industrial activity is no doubt making the task of finding jobs less difficult, but there is abundant evidence that many hundreds of men and employers have been satisfactorily brought together solely through the agency of the scheme, the organisation of which provides that unemployed men in the remotest districts of the Dominion are on an equal footing, so far as opportunities for being placed in private employment are concerned, with men in cities and town.