Idle Workers Sent To New Employment

Northern Advocate, 19 April 1947, Page 4

Idle Workers Sent To New Employment

(From Our Special Correspondent) WELLINGTON, This Day. Employers will shortly be required to fill in one of the fairly detailed forms required by the National Employment Service, now merged with the Labour Department. This form-filling has been criticised because employers generally can only record shortages of staff. They will be more responsive to the process, however, on realising that there are redundant workers to be found occasionally in some parts of the country, and that the Employment Service makes itself responsible for transferring them to the vacant jobs, even providing accommodation in its hostels and camps. RECENT EXAMPLE

The Employment Service has provided details for a recent example of

this work which enabled idle persons to find places in industry, away from their homes, and where they were badly needed. The emergency arose in Gisborne, where owing to the small range of I industries there is a marked seasonal 'surge in unemployment. | A bad run of severe weather early in February caused a substantial falling off in stock sent to the freezing works, probably the biggest single employer in the district. Normal weather would have given another seven weeks’ work, but the Employment Service reports that suddenly 100 men were found redundant, and were given notice.

MANY VACANT JOBS But in other parts of the country there were thousands of vacant jobs. It is the duty of the service to place labour in the right locality, without 'exercising compulsion. In the Gisborne emergency, the service first got to work locally and placed 26 men, mostly married or with family responsibilities. There was little chance of local work for the remaining 74, but by the end of a week, 60 had been placed in jobs over an industrial radius of nearly 300 miles. Freezing works at Wellington, Wanganui and Auckland took 30 men, and an entirely new class of job was found for seven, who went into a bath manufacturing factory in Lower Hutt, thus helping to overcome one of the bottlenecks in building supplies. Of the remaining 30 idle hands, the service states that seven were juveniles and arrangements were made for them locally. Employment was in view for another 12, and it was not anticipated that the remaining 11 would need official assistance. Seasonal work problems are likely to arise in many parts of the country, and the National Employment Service aims, by voluntary transference of workers, to fill gaps from the occasional surpluses by taking the whole Dominion under survey and giving the unemployed worker and the shorthanded employer the prompt help of the state. Full employment, states the service, I is a reality today, the latest returns j showing only 82 men and 16 women j registered as unemployed. J

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