CLOTHING TRADE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 121, 21 April 1938, Page 7

CLOTHING TRADE

REPORTS OF DISMISSALS. REPLY TO MINISTER. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, April 20. “In the course of his remarks concerning the shortening staffs in the clothing trade, the Minister of Labour (Hon. H. T. Armstrong) stated that he did not knoiv the cause of the trouble. It is accordingly a pity that he did not leave it at that,” says a statement of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation. “Unfortunately, he went on to accuse employers of dismissing workers in order .to make a stronger impression on the Government. This is a statement quite unworthy of the Minister. We can only assume it was not wilful misrepresentation, but was made in ignorance of the fact, already in possession of those other Government departments which are charged with the duty of administering matters concerning the manufacturing industries. “The position is exactly the opposite to that stated by the Minister. Some months back the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Hon. D. G. Sullivan) expressed his appreciation of the federation’s action in laying. down the policy the manufacturers slmula avoid dismissals of workers whom it wag in any way possible to retain. As a result of acting on these lines, manufacturers in many cases sustained a definite and substantial financial loss. Now, in addition, they are subjected to this accusation from the Minister of Labour. Workers in the manufacturing industries know and appreciate the position. and -we would suggest that the Minister endeavour to make personal contact with the workers themselves,

when he will gain some real idea of the very fine personal relations existing between many manufacturers and their staffs.” “The Christchurch statement of the position of the clothing trade in that city cannot, unfortunately, be dismissed as ‘pure fiction’ in the manner of Mr J. Roberts, secretary of the New Zealand Clothing Trades Federation,” says the statement. “When Mr Roberts returns to Christchurch he will find that truth is in this case stranger than fiction. While the Federation of Labour has, according to Press reports, been arranging to ask the Government for another increase all round in wages it is under present conditions being found impossible to retain at the existing level of wages workers employed in various divisions of the clothing trade. The statement that a heavy shortening of staff's is occurring in Christchurch is correct, regardless of Mr Roberts’s contentions.” A denial that the dismissals of employees in the clothing trade had been due to a desire to impress the Government was made by representatives of the trade in Wellington to-day. Faced with increasingly high costs and a market flooded by imports, the trade, they said, was in a serious position. No employer, however, would leave his machinery idle by dismissing staff if it were economically possible to keep it running.