FEW NEW SHIPS

Hokitika Guardian, 17 June 1931, Page 5

FEW NEW SHIPS

EXTENT OF CRISIS IN BRITISH YARDS. INDUSTRY SUFFERING. The unions of shipbuilding workers in Britain recently accepted an invitation sent hv the employers to meet them in conference to discuss tlie position of the industry. The returns which show the building position at the end of March last have just been issued by Lloyd’s Register. On March 31 only 132 vessels, representing a total of 693,000 tons gross, were under construction. This was forty-nine vessels and 215,000 tons less than in the preceding quarter, and 230 vessels and 921,000 tons less than a year ago. when a large part of tlie building programme of the period of improving trade before the present world depression set in still remained to be completed. Apart from tlie abnormal year 1922 this decline in a single year is unprecedented in the history of the iiufus-

CARGD SHIPS LAID I P. It is explained by the fact that with a fall in tlu* production of raw materials and manufactured goods in all tin important trading countries, ranging from 20 to 30 per cent., large numbers of cargo ships are laid up in nearly all the maritime.centres of the world. The position would lie very much worse even than it is but for tlie fact that the relative boom in oil tanker construction has not yet spent itself. Unfinished tankers account for nearly half the tonnage now under construction, and a large proportion of the. remaining vessels are liners.

Foreign orders account for about onethird of the total ,tonnage. Apart from the effect of the trade depression, which is felt in other shipbuilding countries as w,!l us :n Great the pre-emin-

<nce ot British yards in relation to world production before the war has been steadily undermint d. the result is that whereas before the war Great Britain and Northern Ireland built about 57 per cent, of the world’s tonnage, the proportion on March 51 was only 31.7 per cent. Production costs appear to be the most important factor in this serous adverse change. The rationalisation scheme devised some time ago makes slow progress. THE UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURE. So far as the shipbuilding workers are concerned the effect of the slump has been to increase the percentage of unemployment in Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 24.9 to no less than 49.5. The number o.f workers wholly unemployed on February e.o last was 95.465, and 5948 were temporarily stopped. This quick plunge into an almost unparalleled unemployment situation is the culmination of ten years of constant adversity in the shipbuilding areas.

Ihe construction of the new giant Ctmarder, which has begun on the Clyde, will improve the position substantially in that centre in coining months, but the outlook for the yards which depend mainly on orders tor cargo vessels could hardlv be worse.