NEW IMPETUS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 April 1942, Page 3

NEW IMPETUS

NEEDED IN AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING ADMIRAL LAND’S SURVEYINDUSTRIAL RELATIONSHIPS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.5 a.m.) WASHINGTON, April 13. Admiral Land, Chairman of the Maritime Commission, testifying to the House of Representatives Naval Committee today, advocated some form of freezing labour and employer relationship to eliminate “daily agitation.” Admiral Land said both open and closed shop agreements and all other agreements between labour and management should be frozen in their present status for the duration of the war. That the simplest, easiest and quickest solution, just to labour, capital and the people. Admiral Land said there was need for a national . war labour policy; if it were obtainable voluntarily, so much the better; failing that by statute. He withheld his views on the suspension of the forty-hour week, but declared himself definitely opposed to double-time pay for the duration of the war. “This is not a time,” he said, “for profiteering on any basis. We are up against a long and hard show and the sooner we realise it the better.” Admiral Land said he favoured profit limitation in war contracts, but cautioned against hasty legislation on this subject, lest it break down. He declared himself wholly in favour of the incentive system and said there was “too damned much loafing going on in the shipyards right now.” To meet the Maritime Commission’s accelerated programme of eight million tons of shipping this year, he declared, labour and management must increase their productivity by thirteen per cent, and to meet the 1943 programme of fifteen million tons the increase must be 25 per cent. Admiral Land admitted that the commission was behind with its 1942 war programme.