SHIPYARD RACE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16505, 5 August 1919, Page 3

SHIPYARD RACE.

NEED FOR UNRESTRICTED OUTPUT. Mr. James French, the principal surveyor of Ltoyds’ Register ru tlie United States and Canada, believes (says the London Daily Mail) that unless British workmen take more kindly to the use of pneumatic riveting machines, our mercantile shipbuilding industry will not regain its pre-war eminence. “In the United States,” says Mr. French, “pneumatic riveting is extensively employed with beneficial effects on tlie output of tonnage and the economy of production generally. When the United States began the tremendous effort to make up tfie losses of Allied merchant ships, workers used to pneumatic tools in building bridges and framed buildings became adepts in shipbuilding in two or three weeks, while men who had never handled such tools acquired proficiency in as many months. The result was an enormous increase of output. “The output of work is also unrestricted in Canada-and Japan . Only in this country does there appear to be a disinclination to use the pneumatic tool. I have visited the principal districts, and am convinced that the workers are not giving the hammer a chance to demonstrate its efficiency. The agreement which is in operation leaves a grfbd deal to be desired in respect of fairness to the employer. Several shipbuilders say that it would pay them to scrap expensive plants and go back to hand-riveting. “But the really serious matter is the smallness of the output. In some places the number of rivets laid up per day is ridiculously small —not merely as compared with the work which Americans, Canadians and Japanese are doing in the same time, but also as compared with what is being done in other parts of the United Kingdom.

“I do not know why the British riveter is maintaining this attitude of passive resistance to the riveting machine. Caulkers and drillers prefer pneumatic tools. On the other side of the Atlantic and in Japan riveters also prefer it. It enables them to earn more money with less physical effort. And tho nso, of tho tools makes possible an immense increase of output.

“It is time the trade union most concerned decided to look the facts in tho face. The United Kingdom’s mercantile shipbuilding industry will simply be unable to live in competition with the shipbuilding industries of America, and. Japan if its methods continue to be oldfashioned and inefficient.

_ “It is a. delusion to imagine that British designs and British workmanship are superior to all others; that owners will come to ns for their ships, rather than go elsewhere. American designs are steadily improving, and American workmanship now compares with the best. The unskilled labour which was drafted into American shipbuilding has become highly skilled. The British shipbuilders have a very stiff task in front of them, and it will assuredly prove too much for them if they do not look squarely in tho face the facts, about pnqumatio tools, andi other labour-sav-ing appliances.”