ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 August 1943, Page 4

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

POST WAR CONTROL

ADVOCATED BY BRITISH T.U.C. NEED OF PREPARING PUBLIC. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.57 a.m.) RUGBY, August 23. Unless control over prices, production, distribution and consumption in the transitional period after hostilities end is maintained at an effectiveness at least equal to that maintained in war time, it will be impossible to ensure the speedy transfer of the nation’s resources from war to peace. — This is the view expressed in the report of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, to be presented to the seventy-fifth annual congress at Southport on September 6. The report adds that if the maintenance of a substantial control in the post-war transitional period is necessary to a speedy and ordered return to prosperous peace time activities, much remains, to be done at the earliest possible moment in order to prepare and educate the public to an understanding and acceptance of that necessity and its probable implications. It is a matter which is now being taken up by the Trades Union Congress with the Government, through the Reconstruction Joint Advisory Council. Meantime appropriate committees of the T.U.C. are giving attention to these and other detailed aspects of transitional and longterm reconstruction policy.

The subject of demobilisation is also dealt with in the report. The General Council thought the formula “age plus length of service,” subject to military needs, should be extended to coyer quality as well as length of service. Moreover it will be necessary to take account of! the demand of industry for the early release of men of special skill and ability. Just as the call-up for the armed services and civil defence has been ordered and regulated in relation to needs, so consideration ought to be given to the desirability and practicability of putting the machinery of the call-up into reverse. The General Council realises that in the event of hostilities in the Far East continuing after they end in Europe, the effects on strategy and tactics are bound to limit considerably the appli; cations of the formula and to require the retention of men who, on a strict application of the formula, would be entitled to priority of discharge. The matter is to be further considered by the Joint Consultative Committee to the Minister of Labour.