WORKERS MUST PRODUCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 268, 13 November 1945, Page 4

WORKERS MUST PRODUCE

LABOUR LEADER’S ADVICE banking and credits not MUCH USE OTHERWISE. (P.A.) Wellington, Nov. 12. “While control of currency, credit and banking by the State is necessary and desirable for progress, it can be important only if we produce goods and services which the currency and credit can produce,” said the president of the New Zealand Labour Party, Mr. J. Roberts, in his opening address to the annual conference of the Labour Party. Mr. Roberts said that the wage and salaried workers of the world had never been given the responsibility of producing goods and rendering services for the people. In the past, a high rate of production often resulted in dismissal for the worker, for there was then what was called over-pro-duction, when, as a matter of fact, purchasing power of the workers was not sufficient. “To-day this is changed,” said Mr. Roberts. We have the purchasing power, but we lack a full supply of consumer goods and services,” he continued. “While goods and services are in short supply, prices are usually high and the living standards are, therefore, lower than they should be. Control of currency and credit, and higher production can assure higher living standards for the people under a Labour Government. “If excess profits are made I believe that the ML .ister of Finance can deal with that question. “There is another side to this subject, and thik part is directed to the Prime Minister and the Parliamentary Labour Party. The objective of our movement is that the wage and salaried workers should produce the goods and render the services required by the people of the nation. The time has arrived when Labour should, at least in part, implement that objective. We had for our policy at the last election the co-operative production of goods and the rendering of services. Only, in a few cases has anything been done in that direction. Neither does there appear to be any serious effort on the part of wageworkers to demand it.

“Unless the workers are prepared to undertake that responsibility, I am afraid the march on the road to further progress will be slow. There is no earthly reason why the workers should not ui <dertake this work in many industries. There is no reason why the workers should not have a voice in the management and direction of industrial production. “It is essential for the Labour Movement that our membership should be given the opportunity of learning the business side of industry, and be given the technical training to carry on this important side of production and distribution. Workers, through the years, have, by the system under which we lived, been made irresponsible, merely to do as they are told. Now Labour has come of age, and there is only one cure for irresponsibility, and that is responsibility to do the job. It requires the joint co-operation of the Government, the political and Trade Union side of our movement, to introduce and make a success of co-operative production in the rendering of services.”