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New training facilities
“Then I want them to undertake a survey of the training facilities in their district. The reason I want that is this:
I do not want thousands of people trained, and then disappointed. They will know the local labor supply, and they will know, too, if we get air raids and works get knocked out, how to plant the men in other parts, and all the rest of it, and how to supplement them. The facts will be before them. They will be my local Cabinet.
“One of their duties in training will be to divide the matter into four categories. One is the works itself. I do not want people taken into a works pretending to be trained. They must be trained if taken into the works. They must not be wasted.
“Second, I want them to survey the works that will have, of necessity, by reason of their task, to go out of business; that is to say, because commercial business has had to slacken down. I cannot use the plant for commercial business, but I can probably use the plant for training purposes.
“In addition, I want them to look around the whole of the maintenance staffs. Many of the maintenance staffs have a very fine body of general engineers who can do anything. I want to use the maintenance staff shops, many of which are running only eight hours, to achieve two objects: first, to accustom a person, if only in a preliminary way, with the use of machinery; and second, I want the engineers in the shop, or, as the case may be, skilled men in any of the crafts, to be my instructors so that I may achieve the double purpose.
“Then, as I say, there is the question of the supply of women and semiskilled labor. I have thrown open today the Ministry of Labor training centers to people other than the unemployed. And here I want to emphasize this point. I want the Branch Secretaries who have got semiskilled men who ought to be promoted but need finishing off in any scheme of training, to arrange with the Local Committees to give them a short time at a training center in order that they can go up, and I shall not have the complaint of people from outside being brought in trained and put over their heads. That is very vital, because the semiskilled man can be made proficient in a very short time.
“My last point with regard to the training business is this: One of the weaknesses I find in production is in the higher grades of supervisors. Judging from some of the reports I have received, there is very grave doubt as to the ability of some of the people who have been appointed as progress supervisors and people of that kind. I am casting no reflection, but I have an impression, and I must forget what I knew before I was Minister of Labor in that respect, though not in anything else. I propose to impress both demonstration rooms and technical colleges in order that some of my own people who know the job can have the facility to get training quickly to full efficiency, I hope, within the higher branches of industry. I then propose to appoint anything up to 400 Labor Supply Inspectors, and their duty will be to enter the shops to see that labor is not wasted, and to see that nothing happens such as happened in the last war when skilled men were held back to stop the plant next door using them; because I must use the skilled men to the maximum capacity or I am forced to too great a dilution. That is the issue that is before me.