from Dave Windsor The following report which appeared in the Financial Times of November 2nd, shows how Wilson's shake-out policy is "shaking out" workers from production industries. Between August and September the number of people employed in manufacturing industries dropped by 11,000. Some 28,000 fewer were employed in construction work. Taking all "index of production" industries together the decrease in employment came to 39,000, of which 1,000 were women, This means that in the week ended September 17 a total of 11,532,000 worked in the production industries (8.5m. men and 3m. women). Counting manufacturing industries alone, employment figures were 8,895,000 (6m. men and 2.8m. women).
Compared with Sentember of last year the engineering and electrical goods group of the manufacturing industries employed 32,000 more, but there were 16,000 fewer workers in metal manufacture, 30,000 fewer in.other metal-using industries and 13,000 fewer in textiles. All told, over the 12 months the number of employees in the production industries dropped by 127,000 (122,000 men and 5,000 women), while the decrease in the manufacturing industries came to 37,000 (29,00C men and 8,000 women),
Also in the week ended September 17, 33 per cent of all operatives working in manufacturing industries were on average each doing 8% hours’ overtime - in fact, the aggregate number of hours of overtime worked in the September week was 1,732,000 more than in the comparable week in August. In the same week 1.2 per cent of all operatives were on short time, each losing 12% hours on average. Wholly unemployed on October 10 were 97,024 peonle in the manufac-~ turing industries, over 74,500 of them men, and more than 22,400 women - an increase of 14,779 in one month. Some 59,500 were temporarily stopned, a rise of 43,305. No wonder the question of direction of labour is being posed!