A MINISTER'S "PRESUMPTION"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24776, 28 November 1941, Page 4

A MINISTER'S "PRESUMPTION"

A week ago the Minister of Labour I was assenting, at the conference of the Manufacturers' Federation at Wairakei, to a statement by the Director of National Service of the principal features of a scheme that was. under consideration for the more effective use in industry of the man-power of the Dominion. Mr Webb had previously asserted that, in view of the possibility of the country being faced with a new danger, of- which he spoke in gloomy terms, it was " too late to, fool about" and " our prejudices of yesterday must sink into insignificance," whatever our political affiliations might be. And when the Director of National Service indicated that an extension of hours in industry was one of the main points of the scheme to which he referred —and, since he named it first, it is reasonable to suppose that it was regarded as the point of greatest significance—Mr Webb said boldly that he would not hesitate to bring down legislation for extending hours if that were necessary, but it was not necessary as power was given under the regulations. He hastened, however, in characteristic fashion, to make a reservation. " If an industry," he said, "wants to extend hours it can make representations to the Industrial Emergency Council." In the circumstances in which, as was stated in evidence before the Armed Forces Appeal Board at Auckland, the introduction of a 44-hour week in the footwear industry would afford the manufacturers an escape from a "labour position that was becoming desperate " he has now declared that "the obvious thing to do" was for the industry to approach the Industrial Emergency Council. If, he said, the council. considered an extension of. hours necessary in the interests of the war effort, " he presumed it would meet the case in the same way as all other cases for an extension had been met." Mr Webb would thus thrust on the Industrial Emergency Council an onus that rightly rests on himself. It is in the power of the Government under the regulations to ex-

tend the hours of work with the result, on the basis of the reported evidence, that the output of boots would be increased to an extent that might permit a number of operatives to be released for military service. But the Minister shirks the responsibility of advising the Government to exercise the power which it has taken to itself. The Industrial Emergency Council is interposed by him as a convenient buffer between the Government and the workpeople. He "presumes" the council would meet, the case in a particular way. If he possessed the courage with which a Minister should act when a desperate positon is threatened in an industry, there should be no need for the adoption of the circuitous course that commends itself to his imagination.