No “Bread And Butter” Lines Involved In Loss

Wanganui Chronicle, 24 March 1949, Page 4

No “Bread And Butter” Lines Involved In Loss

WELLINGTON, Last Night (P.A.) —Confirming reports of the Price Tribunal’s decision to require clothing trade manufacturers to absorb the cost of increased wages in the trade, an official of the Tribunal denied today the allegation of a leading manufacturer that some firms producing “bread and butter" lines would be involved in a loss. “We have allowed the manufacturers a 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 the manufacturers are not being asked and they never have been asked, to produce at a loss. It would anyway 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 a rise in the price of clothing by offsetting 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.”