INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1940, Page 6

INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM

BRITAIN'S PRICELESS ASSET. The manner in which Great Britain is tackling industrial tasks arising from the war was described by the Minister of Labour, Mr Ernest Brown, in a recent speech. "This is a formidable task,” he said, “but we have entered upon it with an asset which our opponent does not possess, the asset of being a free people with free institutions. Germany does not possess that priceless asset. It is a remarkable fact, of which we are proud, that we were able to enter upon the war without imposing any new form of legislative control upon the regulation of wages and working conditions. During the past 20 years we have been steadily setting up in each industry joint machinery through which the representatives of employers and workpeople manage the affairs of their industries and settle their own conditions. As I speak, this joint machinery is operating to adapt those conditions to war circumstances. In the fight for freedom we have the inestimable gain of fighting with the aid of free organisations of employers and workpeople carrying on their work in the way they have themselves decided.”