HUMAN REHABILITATION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22476, 21 July 1936, Page 8

HUMAN REHABILITATION

Mr. Semple hopes to prevent a drain of men from the farms to public works by recruiting labour for his programme solely from the physically fit unemployed. Certainly those long out of work should have the preference, and it would be bad policy to denude the farms of needed hands. At the same time Mr. Semple expects his new recruits to be physically fit. He has told them in many picturesque phrases that they will be expected to give good labour value. " Please step on it," he told one gang of workmen, "because if you don't, you will step out." Now men who have been out of work for months, and perhaps for years, may not be able to get back into the swing of it all at once. That applies to many other jobs besides public works. Even if it is merely a question of raising muscular strength to the standard required to keep pace in physical exertion with fellowworkers in a co-operative party, a little time is required. A man has to be in training, has to regain the mental as well as the physical habit of work. As the demands on his skill increase—on his eye, his brain, his nervous and muscular co-ordination —the time of the probationary period will be longer, its length depending on the time his talents have been wasted in idleness. The trouble is that there is no allowance in ordinary employment or in industrial awards for this human recovery period. Most people and most organisations have assumed that it is sufficient to find the jobs ; they have overlooked the fact that in too many cases they have to refit the man for the job. The need for such a system of human rehabilitation is becoming plain as more vacancies for skilled men occur. It would be bad policy if skill were imported from abroad without some effort being made to restore that atrophied in New Zealand by enforced idleness. One method would be for the Government to start what the army used to call refresher courses.