"WE WORK FOR VICTORY"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 142, 13 March 1942, Page 8

"WE WORK FOR VICTORY"

witicrophone Picture of Industrial Speed-up

HERE’S no deubt about it, the wheels are turning faster in New Zealand than they have ever turned before. On farms, in mines and factories, big and small, we are working for our lives. As more and more men are called up by the armed forces mora and more people are turning their hands to unaccustomed work; women of 60 and even 70 are doing their share in factories; Ps

girls who had never worked with their hands are finding a new dignity in manual labour. New Zealand is at work, and sticking to it. And We Work for Victory is the title of a new series of Sunday night programmes which National and Commercial stations are now featuring over a New Zealand-wide network. It is, in a word, the story of what is happening in industry up and down the country, a microphone picture of men

and women working hard and long to the harsh jangling accompaniment of machines. Tribute to the Workers Most important, the Minister of Labour, the Hon. P. C. Webb, told The Listener, it is a recognition of the hard and honest toil of thousands of workers. The idea arose out of a National Service talk Mr, Webb gave following an inspection of conditions in Auckland freezing works, in which he paid tribute to the spirit of the men and women he had seen working there. "It seemed to me," said Mr. Webb, "that the workers were not getting the credit they deserved. We hear a lot about those who stay away from work unnecessarily, and certainly absenteeism is to be discouraged, but what about the vast majority who stick faithfully at their jobs and work longer hours than

they have ever worked before? The rest of the country does not know half of their story." It is to tell this story that the help of both the. Commercial Broadcasting Service and the Government Film Unit has been enlisted. The programme We Work for Victory will be backed up with films which it is hoped will be shown not only in New Zealand but overseas. All Over the Country The CBS Controller, C. G. Scrimgeour, explained that material for We Work for Victory was being collected by Ian Mackay, former production supervisor at 2ZB and recently appointed station director at 4ZB, Dunedin. With a portable recording apparatus, Mr. Mackay was visiting industries all over the country and taking word pictures of conditions there. Both managers and workers will describe the work they do, to an authentic background of factory noise. Last week Mr. Mackay paid a visit with his equipment to several mines on the West Coast of the South Island and had the novel experience of recording interviews and describing conditions underground, One of the early programmes deals with the activities of the workers in a ‘big glass factory near Auckland, which

is now working round the clock seven days of the week. The factory, which from one’s year’s.end to the other is shut down for only eight hours on Christmas Day, is turning out something like a million bottles a week, of all shapes and sizes and types, ranging, as the commentator puts it, from medicine bottles to the familiar " quart." The men interviewed include the factory manager, a machine operator, and a fault checker, We Work for Victory started last Sunday from the Commercial stations, being broadcast at 8.15 p.m, It has also started from 1YA, 2YA, 3YA, 3ZR and 4YZ, from which it is heard at 6.30 p.m. on Sundays. It will subsequently be heard from other National stations as well,