Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 1939. HARMONY IN INDUSTRY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 1939. HARMONY IN INDUSTRY.

AS yet. the Minister of Labour (Air. Webb) has outlined only x in rather general terms his proposal for the constitution of industrial advisory councils in the principal centres of the Dominion —bodies which will represent rural as well as urban industries. In broad terms, the Minister invites employers and employees to put aside political prejudice and bias “and get together to consider ways and means of more advantageously working existing industries and developing others.’’ The aims thus outlined of course are admirable. Employers and woikeis too often meet on terms of contention to their great mutual loss and Ilfat of the community at large. In the extent to which the spirit, of co-operation between the parties in industry can be developed, all concerned will be much better off.

The success or otherwise of the projected industrial advisory councils will depend largely upon the ability of then’ members to look at and deal with the problems confronting them from a more enlightened standpoint than that of immediate, or apparent, self-interest. For the most part, the relationships of employers and workers in this country have amounted to a continuing contest, over concessions to be given or withheld in particular industries. In the outcome there has developed, amongst other things, a serious lack of balance as between some sections of industry and others —notably between the various secondary industries and services and the basic primary industries of the Dominion. In affirming, a day or two ago, that, a genuine effort was being made for the first time in New Zealand to promote local industry, the Prime Minister (Air. Savage) ac(ded that: — .

On this issue the Government was not only appealing to employers and employees engaged in industry, but was also appealing to the people of the country, who were the buyers of products, to support the products of their own country and their own industry. That was patriotism.

Undoubtedly it is in the interests of all sections of the population that its'needs should be supplied to the greatest extent that is /possible by the products of efficient local industries. Such an. appeal as the Prime Minister has made, however, implies first and foremost fair play all round. It implies that employers and workers must not'only refrain from attempting to exploit one another, but must unitedly refrain from exploiting the public, by needlessly raising the prices of goods or services or in any other way.

■ A genuine effort to promote local industry implies also t hat any one section of industry must be prepared to establish itself on fair relative terms with other sections. This is one of the questions which might very well be taken up by the industrial advisory councils the Minister of Labour is proposing io establish.

It is being complained more and more insistently by farming representatives, for example, that land industry, in the conditions now developing in the Dominion, is being loaded with an impossible burden, of costs, with the result that much land is going out of use, or is being worked to Jess than its full capacity. It is complained also that where labour is needed and could be employed advantageously on the land, farmers are unable to compete with the wages paid on public works undertakings.

If it is desirable that land industry, as well as other branches of industry, should expand —a point hardly in doubt in view of the Dominion’s extreme dependence on returns from primary exports—it is evidently in the interests of our whole population that the lack of balance between employment on the land and employment in other branches of industry should be rectified.

The extent to which farming industry in this country is alpresent. labouring under an injustice is a. matter to which the industrial advisory councils, on which farmers are to have some representation, might very profitably devote serious attention. If it can be shown that farmers are magnifying their troubles and have no real grievance as compared with those engaged in. other branches of industry, it will be well worth while to bring out and establish the facts. If, on the other hand, land industry is being unjustly penalised and crippled, the position, demands rectification, not only in the interests of farmers, but in those of the whole population.

The elementary, condition of stable general prosperity and of the promotion of local industry is lair play all round —-the establishment, that is to say, of an equitable economic relationship between the different sections of industry. There are other questions of great, moment which well deserve the attention of the proposed industrial advisory councils, notably that of raising real wages by cheapening the prices of goods and services instead of more or less ineffectively raising money wages, but the most imperatively urgent industrial issue at present, raised in this country is that of establishing . an equitable economic relationship between the different sections of industry.