REPLY TO CRITICS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 23, 27 July 1945, Page 5

REPLY TO CRITICS

MAN-POWER CONTROL

ATTITUDE IN DOMINION

Anything less than the man-power control which had been exercised by the Government would have resulted in chaos and the weakening of the war effort, declared the Leader of the Legislative Council, Mr. McLagan (Minister of National Service and Industrial Man-power), in the Council yesterday afternoon, replying to criticism of the system that has been in operation in the war years. He knew that great opposition had been expressed in certain quarters, he said, to the very idea of man-power control, but no one had ever been able to argue successfully that there should not have been control.

Some time ago there was great agitation by employers against manpower control, said Mr. McL'agan. It was then announced that the Government did not desire control for the sake of control, and that controls would be relaxed and gradually abolished as circumstances permitted, but would be kept in being as long as was necessary for the welfare of the country and people. ■ Not very long afterwards he was able to announce a measure of relaxation of man-power control, and he asked those employers who had been opposed to control to make application for exemption from the regulations and he told them it would be seriously considered. Instead of hastening to take advantage of the opportunity, those very employers began to make excuses for not doing so, and the result of his invitation was that one employer in the whole of New Zealand had asked for his declaratior. of essentiality to be removed. All the others had said they thought they should all be released at the same time. Man-power control was not administered in that way. At no stage had all employers been controlled or all employers not been controlled, and at no stage had any employer asked for them all to be brought out; but now, merely to conceal the fact that their bluff had been called, they put up the evasion that they should all be freed at the one time.

WORKERS SATISFIED

As to the attitude of the workers, who were supposed to have been tyrannised by man-power control in the war years, continued Mr. McLagan, were they showing any frantic anxiety to be relieved from that burden? In his experience they did not regard it as a burden, except in some individual cases. The great majority were satisfied that what had been done had been done in their interests as well as the interests of the country, that no unfair restrictions had been placed upon them, and that they had had fair treatment under the regulations.

Representatives of large bodies of workers had come to him without being asked and told him they were not anxious to have the regulations removed, and in some cases there was a desire for the regulations to be retained in operation.

That was a tribute to the fair and just way the man-power regulations had been administered so far as the great majority of the people were concerned, said Mr. McLagan. and he thought it a complete answer to any suggestion of unnecessary tyranny in man-power administration.

Mr~ McLagan's comment was in reply to the Hon. T. O. Bishop (Wellington), who, Mr. McLagan said, had felt that the idea of man-power control was so abhorrent to the people of New Zealand that all the workers were longing for the day to come when they would be freed from it.