LABOUR SHORTAGE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 159, 23 July 1937, Page 6

LABOUR SHORTAGE

- Press Association.)

A Possibility on the East Coast MINISTER'S PREDICTION

(By Tel'egraph-

GISBORNE, Last Night. A prediction that during the? next 12 months there would be- a shortage of labour in the districts he had just visited was made hy the acting-Minis-ter of 'Lahour, the Hon. P. C. Webb, when speaking in Tolaga Bay. Tho Minister said tliat the matter of unempl'oynient was one entirely outside party politics, and it was wrong economically, morally and socially and every way they looked at .it to have men out of vvork. The Governinent was anxious to co-operate withi local bodies in work of an asset-making kind. The Government, he said, expected to have £300,000 as a surpius in the unemployment fund, and the Government proposed to spend all that money to provide four months' employment for 7000 of the registered unemployed. The numbers of men able. to work and out of work were diininishing rapidly in the country. That did not apply to the same extent in the cities. There were 5000 men out of work in Auckland, and some of those were not able to work. The local bodies, he added, had a responsibility. Some of those men had their lives expressed in the xoads and the drains whieh they had helped to make, and the Government wished to co-operate withi the local bodies. The closer the Government and the local bodies could get, the better it would be for all, and this would be better than centralised operations. The subsidy of. £4 a week per man was distributed according to the number out of work in each place. There were thousands of such mem who had helped to make -New Zepland and they were .worthy of more than the crumbs. . It was hard to estimate hbw much the railway would mean to the district, but it would be of .great benefit. if the men working on the railway had been allowed to remain out of work . they would have been going about in rags and would have been creating no assets, killihg whatever hope rested in their bosoms. The man who could Work and would not' work would receive no consideration from the Government, He thought that during the next 12 months there would be a shortage rather than a "surpius of men for developmental work in the East Coast district.