LOST TIME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1941, Page 2

LOST TIME

IN FACTORIES THROUGHOUT DOMINION

WORKERS TAKING EXTRA HOLIDAYS.

FACTS TO BE LAID BEFORE GOVERNMENT

ißy Telegraph—Press Associaiton.) WELLINGTON. This Day. Manufacturers through the Dominion had been seriously inconvenienced and had suffered much loss of production through the failure of employees in many instances to return to work after the holidays, said the secretary of the New Zealand Manufacturers' Federation. Mr. D. I. Macdonald, in a statement yesterday. The matter was causing such concern that the federation had asked its affiliated associations to collect definite information from members regarding lost lime with the object of placing the position before ihe Government.

"Despite the considerably improved holiday privileges which have been granted to workers, specially females and youths, by the Court of Arbitration and the employers voluntarily in

recent years, there has been a marked tendency for absenteeism for trivial reasons to increase, particularly after holiday periods.” said Mr. Macdonald.

"This Christmas, with the war news obviously serious from New Zealand's point of view, it was fell that workers would realise their responsibilities to return to work promptly and thus assist production to their utmost.- This responsibility has been repeatedly stressed by those Cabinet Ministers most closely associated with industry and by employers themselves.

"The example of the workers of Great Britain in sacrificing practically all their holidays despite the hardships they are undergoing and despite tiie long and strenuous hours which they have been working, could surely

have been followed by our more fortu-

nate workers in New Zealand

"The most serious aspect of the question is that the loss in production hours is greatest in a number of factories which are directly engaged in military work.

"The Manufacturers’ Federation has asked its affiliated associations to collect definite information from members relating to this lost time with a view to placing the whole position before the Government along with suggested remedial or disciplinary measures. It is surely time that everyone in the Dominion realised that if New Zealand is to play its full part in the present conflict there must be no waste time or waste effort. Hard work and maximum production must be the keynote for 1941."