LABOUR DOES ITS PART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 154, 5 June 1942, Page 9

LABOUR DOES ITS PART

(Reviewed by

F. L.

COMBS

WORKERS AND THE WAR EFFORT. By Dr. W. B. Sutch. Price 1/6. Published by N.Z. Co-op. Publishing Society Ltd., P.O. Box 956, Wellington. WELL-PLANNED, §smooth-run-ning routine is by its very nature efficient, but it is not news. News by its very nature arises out of an interruption to routine. It is the trains that leave the rails that get into the headlines, Yet a routine working over long stretches can be and should be turned into news particularly when it has become an accelerating routine, Labour to-day, mainly by its own free will and consent, has become involved in such an accelerating routine. Breakdowns in it known as strikes hit the headlines. There is drama in themobvious drama. But there is drama, if less obvious a great deal more heartening and important, in the steadily gathering momentum of the offensive’ on the industrial front-an offensive which reflects credit alike on the leadership and the rank and file. In Workers And the War Effort, DrW. B. Sutch sets out to tell the story of this offensive from the standpoint of the workers in the ranks. Those whose attention has been arrested by newspaper accounts of strikes and disagreements will be surprised to find that the essential story is one of sacrifices made and increased efforts put forth. Knowing that in- many places there may be doubts as to this and that in certain questions’ prejudiced views of @labour are held, Dr. Sutch cites from the record. The Author’s Qualifications For the writing of such a pamphlet, Dr. Sutch has three outstanding qualifications: an attachment to his own work-ing-class antecedents, a mastery of his subject as a specialist, an realistic desire to see knowledge bear fruit in the form of pregnant applications. His atti-

tude may on the whole be fairly described as scientific; he prefers to let the facts speak. He begins by reminding his readers of the slow and costly advance by which during more than a century the trade unions have been able to establish protective conditions in regard to wages, hours, and working conditions. This gain, if in toto substantial, has been made by painful inches- It had in a measure to be set aside if an accelerated routine of wartime production was to be got under way. Commonsense and patriotism actuated the worker in making concessions in regard to overtime rates, longer hours, dilution with unskilled labour, and other by no means minor principles. They were not without suspicions in their putting the greater objective before the less. They suspected the profit motive, as who in da competitive system can avoid suspecting it? On the whole, the account given by this writer of Workers and the War Effort is so different from the impression derived from ordinary news sources that it will have an effect of paradox on many readers. It is a wholesale vindication of labour, whose direct sacrifices it is argued are perhaps greater than those of any other section of the community. Some, perhaps quite a number, will doubt this: these are not so much wrought and argued with as presented with the facts; if not all the facts, a pretty representative array of them. A statement witha similar object is Labour in the War (Penguin series), by John Price, introduction by the Rt. Hon. Ernest Bevin, M.P., Minister of Labour and National Service. In Britain it has evidently been found necessary to set out some such vindication of labour as Workers and the War Effort attempts for New Zealand. In both cases it has become rather urgent to supplement what is in the news by what is behind the news.