BUILDING WORK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 October 1938, Page 4

BUILDING WORK

IMPORTATION OF TRADESMEN FROM AUSTRALIA. NO OBSTACLES ANTICIPATED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The suggestion that the New Zealand Government might place obstacles in the way of the importation of carpenters from Australia was dismissed as absurd by Mr A. Fletcher, director of the Fletcher Construction Co, Ltd, who returned from Sydney by the Awatea on Saturday. Confirming the report that he had engaged 100 carpenters, bricklayers and plasterers to work for his company in New Zealand, Mr Fletcher said in an interview that he did not see on what grounds objection could be raised because it had been stated over and over again by the Government that building in the Dominion was being held back through lack of skilled tradesmen. Mr Fletcher said that the men had been guaranteed 12 months’ work by his company and the majority of them would eventually be employed on the Centennial Exhibition buildings at Rongotai. He anticipated that by the end of the year the inside work would be sufficiently far advanced to enable most of the newcomers to be absorbed there. Meantime they would be employed on the company’s Government housing contracts. A few of the men came by the Awatea, but the majority would be leaving Melbourne bj 7 the Maunganui on November 2. Mr Fletcher said there was a slight recession in the building trade in Sydney at present, but the men he had engaged were not coming to New Zealand through lack of work but because they wanted a change and were also attracted by the forthcoming exhibition.