WORK & WAGES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 February 1939, Page 6

WORK & WAGES

POSITION IN GREAT BRITAIN DEBATE ON LABOUR PARTY RESOLUTION. GREAT INCREASE IN OUTPUT PER MAN. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.50 a.m.> RUGBY, February 16. A debate on unemployment was raised in the House of Commons on a Labour resolution, moved bj r Mr A. Greenwood, which regretted the continued failure of the Government either to produce definite plans for the provision of work and wages under the present system, or to initiate a policy which recognised that the problem could only be solved by the application of Socialist principles. In calling upon the Government to advance proposals to meet the situation, Mr Greenwood reviewed the position in the shipbuilding, cotton, agricultural and other industries which were in a depressed condition, and contrasted this fact with the assertion in 1 memorandum of the Royal Economic Society that the increase in the physical output per operative in the last five years amounted to twenty-seven per cent, and in the case of engineering industry to fifty-seven, per cent. He urged the need of great public schemes of land drainage and the development of roads and transport, as well as Work in connection with the protection of the civil population in time of war. The Minister of Labour (Mr Ernest Brown) said that although there was no difference of opinion in the country about the gravity of some aspects of the problem, it could not be stated in the terms Mr Greenwood had used.