Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1939. COOPERATION IN INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 January 1939, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1939. COOPERATION IN INDUSTRY

PULL sympathy must be i'elt with Hie aims declared by the Minister of Labour (Mr Webb) when he addressed representatives of employers and employees in. industry at the conference held in Wellington yesterday. It is beyond question that if Hie parties in industry can be brought together in friendly co-operation a long step will be taken towards solving the economic problems by which the Dominion is confronted. An effective, expansion of secondary industries will not only ensure the absorption in self-supporting productive enterprise of the fairly considerable proportion of our working population still dependent on relief work, but will permanently strengthen the national economy, by making New Zealand less extremely dependent on external markets and in other ways.

At yesterday’s conference there were gratifying indications of readiness on*the part of the various organisations of employers and workers represented to go into the whole question of industrial expansion on its merits. If the same good spirit can be maintained in shaping and carrying into effect practical and detailed plans, far-reaching benefits should result. In dealing with the shortage of skilled workers, the Minister made the important point that while boys and girls were being absorbed into industry immediately they left school, their fathers and older brothers were out of work, and said he hoped the proposed industrial advisory council might enable large numbers of men to be absorbed into profitable industries.

Action is nowhere more urgently demanded than in dealing with this aspect of the existing position. . If employers and workers can be induced to co-operate in building up the ranks of skilled labour by facilitating measures of special training, manv individuals and the country in general will alike benefit.

New Zealand has been living beyond its means and now must either build up production very considerably and establish a better balance of production, or expect to see its average living standards lowered inevitably and inexorably. Nothing could better contribute to the advance that is needed than the. transfer of men as rapidly as is practicable from unskilled to skilled occupations. It is considered by those who are intimately in touch with industrial conditions in the Dominion that many men, particularly young men, now employed as labourers and in other unskilled occupations could easily be trained for efficient service in branches of modern industry.

A. good deal has been accomplished under schemes of adult apprenticeship, but these schemes have left a large part of the problem untouched. Only the right spirit of co-operation is needed to open the way to much more comprehensive action and results. On the one hand there is the need and the possibility of expanding some branches of secondary production very considerably. On the other hand there are large numbers of men, now not very advantageously employed, who are quite capable of qualifying, under intensive training, for skilled and much more productive work. Training schemes necessarily would have to be subsidised, but public money might be spent much more advantageously in that way than in the payment of relief wages. It should be quite possible to establish conditions of training and payment which would obviate any objection by trades unions on the ground of interference with ordinary apprenticeship.