Timber Workers Figures Disputed

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 270, 4 February 1928, Page 1

Timber Workers Figures Disputed

COMPANY MANAGER’S VIEW CITY ACTS AS MAGNET The figures supplied by the secretary of the Timber Workers’ Union, Mr E. J. Phelan, showing the number of unemployed timber workers in Auckland, have been questioned by the manager of the Kauri Timber Company, Mr. D. L. J. Clayton, who expresses anxiety to obviate the possibility of the position being misunderstood.

“I would be very surprised if there were many more than 50 of the actual (Auckland timber workers out of employment,” he said this morning, in placing his viewpoint before a Sun man. “The position is serious—l know it is serious, and we have to face it —but there is no use in exaggerating it. In this case I think it has been exaggerated and badly exaggerated.” The impression which Mr. Clayton derived from the figures published was that there were 600 timber workers from Auckland city out of work. This, he said, was ridiculous. His company was working full time, but if things in the industry did not brighten, some of the men would have to go on short time in a feW weeks. Mr. Phelan explains, however, that the 600 men whom he quoted as being out of work wei-Q from the Auckland Province and included bushmen. That they are in Auckland is undisputed; that they are a burden upon the local market is equally clear; but the localities from which they migrated extends from the city down to the boundary of the province. In Auckland, said Mr. Phelan, the position was less acute, but he estimated from his knowledge of the situation that there were 200 from the city alone who could not find jobs. It is declared by Mr. Clayton—and admitted by Mr. Phelan—that a great many of the timber workers in Auckland come from other parts of the Dominion—attracted no doubt by the ready assistance which the Queen City gave when the market became bad. “In selecting three bushmen to go to the Solomon Islands recently,” said Mr. Clayton, “we had men from Bangitikei district, from the South Island, from New South Wales and from Queensland, as wpll as those from our own province. There is a magnet in Auckland, but I am not prepared to say here just what it is.” Mr. Phelan says: “A big number of .these men who have come from outside the city are from the King Country, and they have come North because it is the only place where they can get a crust. In every sawmilling township there is the usual butcher, baker and grocer, arid as *sodn as the mill stops these tradesmen go out of business. The men have, to leave their townships in search of • jobs, and incidentally in search of food.- There are hundreds of timber workers'in Auckland looking for jobs); and while Orie mill rriight be working fiilf.' time—arid that only re-cently-r-.thts .does n.ot.give an indication of the others,, where.short time is being worked-.