b Los proyectos sociales de Hecho en Buenos Aires

In 1939 the Labour Government extended wage subsidies to the Boot­ Manufacturing Industry under Scheme No. 16A. By 1942, 23 men had been engaged under the scheme. The numbers of those still in employment under the scheme at 4 April, 1942 are given on Table 22 below.

TABLE 22: SCHEME NO. SUBSIDISED WORKERS IN

INDUSTRY Contracts in operation 10 Contracts terminated 12 Contracts expired 1 23

Source: AfHR, 1942 H-l lA

The Labour Government's provision of subsidies to manufacturing industry wa� part of its long-term plan to encourage the development of local industries in order to stabilise the employment situation. Though the numbers involved was small, the measure was intended to encourage the development of such industries.

Recognising the high rate of male youth unemployment, in July, 1937, the Labour Government launched the Youth Farm Training Scheme, "to engage

inexperienced unemployed single youths and men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one years" (A]HR, 1939 H- l lA: 5). The subsidy paid to farmers was limited to eight weeks, but farmers had to make a commitment to have the trainee(s) for at least four months. They were also required to accept liability for any workplace accidents, and to observe the provisions of the Agricultural Workers Act. The subsidy rates were lOs. a week for those aged between 18 and 19, 1 2s. 6d. between 19 and 20, and I Ss. between 20 and 2 1 . The scheme was terminated in March 1938 (NZPD, 1937).

In 1939, before the outset of Second World War the much despised Scheme No. 5, introduced under the Coalition Government in February 193 1 , was'

finally phased out and those employed under the scheme were absorbed under Scheme No. 13. Employment under the Scheme 13 was limited to four months' work in twelve (NZPD, 1938). What this meant was that a worker was only eligible for employment under the scheme for a period of four months in a year. The goal of the Government was that the men employed under Scheme No. 1 3 would be transferred to private employment as opportunities arose (A]HR, 1942 H-l lA).

Workers employed under Scheme No. 13 were still classified as relief workers, whereas this term was no longer applied to workers given employment under the Department of Public Works. Workers employed under the scheme remained on the register of the State Placement Service. In launching Scheme No. 13 the Minister of Employment said:

In order to give effect to the policy of placing all fit unemployed men in full-time work, subsidies are made available to local authorities - City and Borough Councils, River and Drainage Boards, School Committees, sports bodies and other social insti"tutions not established for profit - for the full-time employment of registered and eligible labour at award rates of pay on developmental works which would not be put in hand without State assistance CAJHR, 1 939 H-l lA: 4)

Unemployment was no longer treated as an ephemeral characteristic of the economic system. From the time the Labour Government assumed office in December 1935, the Government programme was designed to achieve full employment. According to the Prime Minister, Savage: "to avoid the human misery of. . .large-scale unemployment, we must

plan

how to avoid it" (Sewell, 1938: 12, emphasis in original). The Labour Government believed that the effects of unemployment on workers and society could be minimised if the government committed itself to ensuring that as much employment as possible was created during a recession.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE WAR

Labour had three years and nine months in office before the start of the Second World War. Once war broke out unemployment gradually disappeared. In the pre-war years unemployment was not abolished, but it was greatly reduced (Hobbs, 1967). There were 19,000 registered unemployed men at the beginning of the war in September 1939. This figure was r�duced to 13,000 by the end of 1940 and had fallen to less than 2,000 by 1942 (Baker, 1965). In July 22 1940 military conscription was introduced: until then military service had been voluntary. Many of the unemployed had either volunteered for military service or had been absorbed into industry to fill the ,

positions of those who left for war (Condliffe, 1959). By 1942 job creation schemes ceased to exist (Baker, 1965).

The growth of the New Zealand military was spectacular; the peacetime strength of 3,000 personnel of the three services [Army, Navy and Air Force] in 1939 reached its peak in 1942 when 1 57,000 personnel were in the armed forces (AJHR, 1946 H-I IA). At the beginning of the war New Zealand's male labour force was estimated to have been 520,000; in 1942 the figure had fallen to 396,000. At this point in time, 45 percent of all men between 18 and 45 years of age were in the forces (Paul, 1946). It was not until December 1943 that the male civilian labour force began to recover with the reduction in size of the armed forces. The total male civilian labour force in 1943 had risen to 406,000 (AJHR, 1946 H-l lA).

In 1940 a War Cabinet was established consisting of three representatives of the Government and two of the Parliamentary Opposition. The Government members were the Prime Minister, Peter Fraser, the Minister of Finance, Walter Nash, and the Minister of Defence, Frederick Jones, with Adam Wallace Hamilton, then Leader of the Opposition, and Joseph Gordon Coates, a former Prime Minister, representing the Opposition (Baker, 1965). The War Cabinet was given full responsibility for all matters directly relating to the country's war effort, the ordinary Cabinet continuing to meet and to function as before in connection with all domestic matters (Nash, 1944).

Under the Emergency Regulations Amendment Act of May 1 940, the Manpower Committee had the right to make civilians (both men and women) register for work, direct them into specific jobs, handle absenteeism and prevent workers from quitting (King, 1981). From June 1942 women aged 20

and 2 1 were required to register with the Manpower Committee. In 1942 all men from 18 to 59 and all women (without dependent children) from 18 to 40 were liable to be directed to a job (Registration for Employment Orders No. 4, 3 August 1942, 1942/239; No. 5, 24 September 1942, 1942/281 , National Archives).

At the end of March 1943, there were some 1 10,000 people who were registered with the Manpower Committee. Some 36,000 women who were not ordinarily employed outside the home were employed in the war effort by September 1942 (Registration for Employment Order No. 6, October 1942, 1942/291 , National Archives). At the outset of the war there were 1 80,000 women in civilian work; by 1942 the number had increased to 230,000. The ratio of women to men among those in full-time employment rose from 27: 100 in 1936 to 34: 100 in 1945 (Department of Statistics, 1946). As Sutch remarked: lithe war had a liberating effect on women; they became more recognised as people who could contribute to economic life" (Sutch, 1969: 252). Women who had rarely been given the opportunity to do certain jobs other than nursing, teaching and other types of work that had been stereotyped as women's work were needed as agricultural labourers and process workers in factories (Ebbett, 1984). Under the threat of war, the ideology of women's place in the private sphere started to crumble, together with the association of men with certain jobs and women with others (Novitz, 1987). The Second world war had a lasting effect on policies toward the labour market (Baker, 1965).

The Annual Report of the Employment Division of the Department of Labour of 1 942 stated, "war conditions have increased the general acceptability to employers of those types of men whom Lhey would not engage in normai times II (A]HR, 1942 H-1 1A: 2). Despite this achievement, there was concern

expressed whether full employment could be maintained once the war was over. The Director of the Organisation for National Development, Mr J. S. Hunter, wrote: liThe most important single problem to be faced after the war is the maintenance of full and efficient employment of the Dominion's labour force" (Baker, 1965: 359). Baker said Mr Hunter's concerns were widely held by many bureaucrats and economists. Few thought that full employment in that demanding sense could be maintained after the war, but it was to continue both as a fact and as an objective of economic policy until the late

THE lABOUR GOVERNMENT AND THE IMMEDIATE POSlWAR YEARS

At the close of Second World War, when the United Nations Charter was drawn up in San Francisco, New Zealand was prominent among countries that pressed for the inclusion of clause [AI under Article 55 which states that the United Nations shall promote: higher standards of living, full employment and conditions of social progress and development

The Labour Government's response to the full employment clause of the UN Charter was the enactment of the Employment Act 1945 under which a Department of National Employment Service was established for the primary purpose of promoting and maintaining full employment (NZS, 1945).

The immediate postwar years in New Zealand were remarkable in that there was no unemployment as there had been after World War I . The work of absorbing the high proportion of servicemen into the labour force was achieved under the policy of full employment to which the Government had committed itself long before the war came to an end in 1945 (Sutch, 1966). The Labour Government was able to provide jobs without inflation by maintaining and controlling the demand for goods and controlling prices. The growth of jobs was further enhanced under the stabilisation programme adopted during the war and continued after the war (CondHffe, 1959). Table 23 below illustrates the trends in unemployment under the first Labour Government between 1938 and 1949.

TABLE TRENDS IN UNEMPLOYMENT BETWEEN AND

In document Diagnóstico HBA pdf (página 94-98)