BRITISH MANPOWER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1940, Page 5

BRITISH MANPOWER

ORGANISATION PLANS SIZE OF ARMED FORCES CONCEALED. SURVEY BY THE MINISTER OF LABOUR. (British .Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 16. During a discussion today in the House of Commons on the organisation of manpower, the Minister of Labour, Mr Ernest Brown, announced that the calling-up date for men 27 years of age would be May 25. The numbers of men mobilised either for military service or for reservation in vital industrial employment has reached 1,700.000. Since the outbreak of the war 300,000 men had volunteered for the armed forces. There had to be maintained a balance of manpower as between the armed forces and the needs of industry. Involved in that was a factor known only to the Government and which he could not divulge —the size at which the armed forces had been fixed. The Minister dealt with measures taken to release from military duty men whose qualifications were essential to war production at Home. He paid a tribute to the invaluable cooperation of trade unions in the organisation of industry for war. From the beginning of the re-arma-ment programme it had been emphasised repeatedly that the maximum effort would not be felt before the second or third year. They were now (reaching that stage. The Government had prepared an estimate of the probable requirements of manpower in the war industry foi 18 months ahead. This was a secret, but employers and workers in the various industries concerned had been taken into the Government’s confidence. The Minister attributed the smooth working of all the arrangements necessary for bringing industry to the pitch of productivity that the war effort required to the growth over recent years in the efficiency of the machinery for collective bargaining between the employers and the trade unions.