Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1947 SHORTAGE OF LABOUR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 89, 3 February 1947, Page 4

Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1947 SHORTAGE OF LABOUR

ONE of New Zealand’s greatest bottlenecks to full industrial developments for some years will be a shortage of labour. There are two factors in particular which have brought about this position, one being the premature establishing of a multitude of new industries and the other the growth of the public service. One of the claims made by Labour candidates during the election campaign was that “full employment” was an accomplished fact; but the results as we see them today demonstrate that full employment is not 100 per cent, economically sound unless it is fully productive in the basic industries. A big increase in the industrial labour force has taken place at a time when, on every hand, the demand for labour has been growing far in excess of the declining rdte of discharges from the services. Wage and salary earners in State employment have doubled in number since 1938 and are still on the increase proportionately to the State’s incursions into business. The last official statistics put the figure as at April 1, 1945, at 30,500 —a huge total in a country with an adult population of little more than a million. The total in 1938, inclusive of 5,786 on the temporary staff, was 15,755; and in 1940, inclusive of 8,610 temporary employees, it was 20,274. The increase has been maintained, the total in 1943 including public servants in the forces being 28,800. By legislation enacted in the last session the total was further swelled by the classification as public servants of all those employed in various departments which were created or expanded during the war and whose functions have been retained on a peacetime basis. All this, of course, has a major bearing on the cost of running the country. Annual appropriations in the last Budget reached the enormous total of £74 millions, an increase on the net expenditure of the previous year of no less than £42 millions. This was only partly accounted for by the liquidation of the War Expenses Account, certain expenditure formerly coming under this heading transferred to the Consolidated Fund. Two major items in the appropriation increase were £ll millions increase in the Social Security transfer and £5 millions for departmental expansion. Herein is sufficient explanation of why taxes which were imposed for war purposes have not been removed. Departmental votes are absorbing more and more revenue partly because of expansion and partly, as in the case of education, because there is much leeway to be made up. None of this can be done without further increasing our difficulties arising from labour and material shortages. The general departmental expansion reflects the Socialistic tendency to bring more and more people into public employment—to swell further our already huge number of public servants. If so, then the extra staffs must be drawn from the depleted ranks of labour. This depletion has become so pronounced that the running of essential services is being daily jeopardised. It is not a bright outlook, certainly not one that points to a rapid recovery after six years of war.