TIME FOR ACTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23734, 15 February 1939, Page 8

TIME FOR ACTION

The Government has approved of a plan for the importation of skilled labour for the building trade. A few days ago the Minister of Housing expressed the opinion that if the housing shortage was to be overcome—it is to be supposed that he had mainly in mind the need for keeping the Government’s building programme up to schedule —more tradesmen would have to be found. They can not be found immediately in the Dominion; the collapse of the apprenticeship system is beginning to show its effects in earnest now. But they can be imported, or it is the Government’s hope that that is the case; and the Labour caucus last week took the decision to secure carpenters from overseas and to concentrate on the task of training others in the country. Both courses have frequently been urged as wise and, indeed, essential for the future well-being of industry. It is an ironic circumstance that in a country where thousands of men have to be maintained in employment at the public expense there are gaps in the ranks of skilled labour which it is impossible to fill. Not only carpenters are wanted. There is a demand for bricklayers and plasterers, for plumbers, for domestics and for competent farm workers. And, if the needs of expanding secondary industries are to be met, there will be scope for the training and employment of operatives in various classes, of production. What is to be done to remedy this condition of unbalance in the labour market? In the case of the building and allied trades it is the Prime Minister’s judgment that the “ time has come for action.” The comment would have been equally apt two or three years ago, when the full implications of the decline in the numbers of apprentices were beginning to be understood. It is true that the training of labour has had a good deal of consideration, from this Government as well as its predecessor, and that apprenticeship laws have been adapted to some extent as a means of overcoming the problem of youth unemployment. But little genuine enthusiasm has been shown for the idea of training men, in intensive courses, to take their places in the depleted ranks of the country’s tradesmen. The trades unions themselves have not welcomed proposals on those lines, being jealous of the position occupied by .their members

on a market where labour has been kept at a premium. Yet, short of relaxing the immigration laws to the extent of opening the country’s doors to skilled tradesmen in almost all categories, there is no other way in which the present serious position can be remedied. The training of skilled workers ought to be regarded as a task of the first importance. There is no lack of material, despite the boast that unemployment virtually does not exist. Young men would be better employed learning a useful trade than on public works which have to be financed out of lean moneys or taxation. They would then have the promise of a future in which there would be both permanence and stability. And, in such a policy, combined with one aiming at selective and judiciously controlled immigration, there would be the promise also of the restoration of industrial strength where it is badly needed.