ALLEGATION DENIED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27038, 24 March 1949, Page 6

ALLEGATION DENIED

INEVITABILITY OF LOSS PA WELLINGTON, Mar. 23. Confirming the reports of the Price Tribunal’s decision to require clothing trade manufacturers to absorb the cost of the increased wages in the trade, an official of the tribunal denied to-day the allegation of a leading manufacturer that some firms producing “ bread and butter lines would be involved in a loss." “We have allowed manufacturers the total wage cost in their costing,” said the official, “ and the cut that has been made is a cut in the net margin of profit over and above their total production cost. That means that manufacturers are not being asked, and they never have been asked, to produce at a loss. “It would, in any case, be open for any manufacturer to present his case to the tribunal if he thought he was making a loss. What the tribunal has done has been to stop the rise in the price of clothing by off-setting the reduction in the margin of profit against the recent wage increase for clothing operatives. We have not adversely affected in any way the production of essential lines.”