EMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23796, 1 May 1939, Page 6

EMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS

MEN ON PUBLIC WORKS ABSORPTION IN INDUSTRY SCHEME UNDER PREPARATION (Per United Press Association) CHRISTCHURCH, Apl. 30. A scheme i'or the absorption in factories of many aduit workers now engaged on scheme No. 13 works and public works, is engaging the full attention of the Minister of Labour (Mr P. C. Webb). Details have yet to be discussed between the Minister, the Manufacturers’ Association, and the Federation of Labour, but Mr Webb is optimistic that general approval of the scheme will be given. Outlining his plan, Mr Webb said that any adult anxious to learn a trade would, if the Manufacturers’ Association and the Federation of Labour accepted the scheme, be given an opportunity to do so. If satisfactory arrangements could be made with those bodies, the Government would be prepared to give whatever assistance it deemed advisable in helping the secondary industries to take on adult labour, and to train that labour in order that more consumable goods might be produced in the Dominion.

“It is quite obvious that if the manufacturing industries are to produce the commodities needed to meet national requirements, extra labour must be employed,” said Mr Webb. “All young labour is now employed—in fac* there is a definite shortage of this class of labour throughout the country. To import labour from other countries to do the work we think ought to be done by our own people would be a mistake. Workers must be given their opportunity, and the Government proposes to face its responsibility by assisting in having our own people trained.”

During the depression, the Minister said, many hundreds of young single men were compelled to leave their homes in the cities to go on public works jobs in all parts of the country. They had no opportunity of learning a trade, and the Government believed that that opportunity was now being presented. By providing them with work in the factories, production of things so badly needed would be assisted. Trained artisans and skilled operatives would be produced, and the number employed on various public works throughout the country would be reduced. “I am confident that these men will make excellent tradesmen, and will compare more than favourably with those that may have had to be imported from overseas, if we did not move to train our own,” concluded Mr Webb. ELDERLY RELIEF WORKERS POSITION TO BE CLARIFIED (Per United Press Association) CHRISTCHURCH, Apl. 30. Provision is being made by the Government to meet the case of men over 60 years of age with dependents who have been dismissed from scheme No. 13 employment and placed under the age benefit of the Social Security Act. “A full statement on what the Government proposes to do will be made in a day or two,” the Minister of Labour (Mr P. C. Webb) said in an interview on Saturday. A report not officially confirmed was made to a meeting of the Christchurch branch of the National Unemployed Workers Movement last week, that men over 60 years of age who desired to Continue work, would be able to restart work on scheme 13 on May 1. This report was the one referred to by the Minister.