HELPING INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 July 1938, Page 5

HELPING INDUSTRY

USE OF THE EMPLOYMENT FUND SURVEY IN DEPARTMENTAL REPORT. ABSORPTION OF DISPLACED LABOUR. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “The possibilities which exist for the establishment of enterprises capable of economic operations have been encouraged by grants and loans from the employment Promotion Fund,” states the annual report of the Employment Division of the Department of Labour which was presented in the House of Representatives yesterday by the Minister of Labour, the Hon. H. T. Armstrong. The rehabilitation of existing industry, adds the report, had shared with new ventures the financial resources of the fund. • The report states that indiscriminate aid to all and sundry who required financial assistance for commercial ventures was carefully avoided. Grants and loans for such purposes from the fund were made available only if the objects of the proposed expenditure complied with the following principles: — (1) The financial assistance must be for the development of primary and secondary industries in New Zealand, and the establishment of new industries, so that an increasing number of workers will be required for the efficient carrying on of such industries; (2) the expenditure must not mean the bolstering-up of uneconomic enterprise by subsidies or tariffs, but must incorporate intelligent control and development of industries which the Dominion should be able to carry on to meet the requirements of her own population.

“Financial assistance to industries is in every case preceded by a thorough and impartial study of each application by the Bureau of Industry, which requires to be satisfied that the economic welfare of the country would be advanced by the provision of State assistance,” the report continues. “The absorption of unemployed men into gainful occupations- in industries fostered by State assistance must necessarily be an unhurried process. Until absorption is fully achieved the State is faced with the problem how best to retain the faculty and ability of the fit worker.”

After referring to the efforts made during the past twelve months to encourage the provision of work by State departments and public employing authorities, the report states it was fully recognised that works for the relief of unemployment were frequently to some degree unproductive. That did not mean that the worker’s labour added nothing to the community wealth.,. The able-bodied unemployed constituted a labour reserve of industry, and the loss in consequence arose out of the necessity of retaining the quality of employability in the everchanging personnel of this reserve of man power.

“It is-the responsibility of the State to minimise unemployment to the greatest degree possible so that the population will be maintained on as high a standard of living as is practicable,” the report states. “In the past the failure to see what was really happening to the unemployed man and the non-availability of sufficient funds for expenditure purposes caused many wrong courses to be followed, and the unemployed did not receive, to the full from the rest of the community the help which they needed. The provision of good and useful works at normal full-time rates of pay is intended to rectify this.” The report states that the problem of unemployment today, and for future generations, may not be how to provide subsistence for persons out of employment, but how surplus labour may be absorbed in socially useful ways at rates of pay consistent with those enjoyed by the rest of the community. The existence in the midst of the working community at any given time of a body of unemployed able workers appeared inevitable, and with the constant improvement in management and technology there was a possibility that the number would increase up to that time when actuarial estimates predicted a downward trend in the population figures.