CHEESE PRODUCTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 April 1938, Page 3

CHEESE PRODUCTION

CHANGE OVER TO BUTTER? HIGHER COSTS. POSITION IN TARANAKI. Cheese factory directors are among the most worried men in Taranaki today for they can find no satisfactory solution to the problem of how to go on making cheese from May 1 with the staffs confined to a 38-hours’ week as compared with the 44 hours that are being worked now. What will happen, it is expected, is that cheese companies will make butter or if they have not the plant to do so will probably make arrangements with neighbouring factories that have. Already May 1 is becoming the obsession of cheese company directors. In an effort to keep down costs and at the same time to avoid dismissing staffs they have gone into the matter from a variety of angles but the manufacture' of butter from that date seems to be the only way of avoiding what they regard as the prohibitive cost of continuing to make cheese on an hours’ basis which they say is totally inadequate. Inquiries made in Taranaki showed that all cheese directorates were concerned over the position and that they could see no remedy |>ut to make butter from the beginning of May. It was pointed out that the normal operations in a cheese factory could hardly be performed even at the tail end of the season in less than the time available now. Even at present with 44 hours available it was difficult enough to get the work done without incurring excessive burdens in overtime. Actually a week of 52 hours was more in line with the needs of cheese companies so that it could easily be seen what a reduction of hours 'under the award that came into force at the beginning of this year meant to companies. POSSIBLE REPERCUSSIONS.

If the cheese companies turned to the manufacture of butter, it was explained, the factories could be worked with less staff than was needed now. This was the obvious solution but it meant the dismissal of many men if it were followed throughout Taranaki and it might have repercussions in London where the influx of an unhsually large amount of butter might force the price down unduly while other cheese producing countries would reap the advantage of a decided slackening in the New Zealand supply. Companies could employ extra men to compensate for the shorter hours, but the cost would be almost prohibitive. The suggestion that a four and a-half days’ week be worked was no remedy for either more men would be needed or else the present staffs would have to be worked overtime at the high overtime rates that obtained. Thus for the directorates studying costs as divorced from other considerations the manufacture of butter was the only option, yet the outside factors could not be lightly dismissed. “Labour and interest charges are up and freezing costs will go up so there seems to be no end to it till the whole thing busts,” one company chairman remarked. “If the extra overhead that will be caused if we continue to make cheese under the shorter week were only one isolated item we might be better able to stand it but it is just another burden added to increased costs that are already reaching huge proportions,” he said. He went on to say that it was no use expecting the guaranteed price to go on coping with the tide of rising costs as it would only be built up to the stage where it became unsound and collapsed under its own weight.