WAR PRODUCTION

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22554, 12 April 1943, Page 5

WAR PRODUCTION

Many Obstacles Still Exist Priorities Scramble N.Z.P.A.—Special Australian Correspondent (Rec. 6.30) LONDON. Apr. 10. Although enormous advances have been made in Britain’s war production, many obstacles still clutter up the way to a clean drive through to victory on the industrial front, according to a report from the Amalgamated Engineering Union. The report, which is based on returns from the joint production committees in 1000 factories, says the Ministry of Production had no overriding authority to end the priorities scramble which was crippling production. Countless workshops were grappling with intolerable shortages and inadequacies. The system <f allocating raw material, which is safe in the hands of monopoly interests, still defeats the efforts of the plan to carry out programmes of continuous high output. Sub-contracts still evade control and confusion reigns in the underworld of sub-contractors, who retain a vast reserve of precious skill. “It is evident there is a fundamental lack of a long-term central plan for production which is capable of overruling all vested interests and irrelev--ant considerations,” says the report. During recent events in North Africa production limped on with unco-ordin-ated steps, stumbling over protected inefficiency guided principally by the combined zeal, goodwill and ingenuity of individual arrangements and men who rail against the slow pace, continues the report. Britain has been geared up to a higher production effort than ever, but at the top there is still improvisation and fiddling—fiddling to accommodate the interests of private ownership and to safeguard the least efficient unit and avoid stepping on the toes of the powerful interests associated with the controls governing production. The workers fear that as victory comes within sight there would be increasing pressure from above to discourage their participation in the organisation of production and less inclination to subject the big industrialists to the type of control without which production cannot reach the potential maximum. The workers are not persuaded that every ounce is going into the fight to-day. There comes the point which we are fast approaching when half-measures are not far removed from sabotage.

The report emphasises that its information is drawn exclusively from the workers, but no point is made which is not fully backed by evidence. Increases of production are recorded in 49 per cent of the establishments covered by the report compared with 64 recorded in the previous report. The increased output is attributed to reorganisation within the factories and improved co-operation from the managements. Decreased production is recorded in four per cent of the factories while 46 per cent showed no change. Other factors holding up 7 production, says the report, are obsolete and unsuitable machine tools, the misuse of labour, idle machines, the shortage of supplies, the uneven flow of orders, obstructive managements, low standards of output and late coming and absenteeism.