TRADE APPRENTICES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 48, 26 February 1926, Page 5

TRADE APPRENTICES.

REPLY TO EMPLOYERS. MINISTER DEFENDS THE ACT. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The Hon. G. J. Anderson the Minister of Labour, in reply to statements in a telegram from Auckland regarding the working of the Apprentices Act, says: "I have seen the statement purporting to have been made by the secretary of the Auckland Employers' Association to the effect that a large number of boys who left school at the end of last year are unable to obtain work in the skilled trades, notwithstanding that employers are willing and anxious to take them. Mr. Wright proceeds to blame the Apprentices Act for the difficulty. Unless Mr. Wright is wrongly reported, he is under some misapprehension. The Act does not fix the proportion of appren ; tices, which is left to the Court of Arbitration. I understand that in most cases the proportion that has been fixed by the Court has been agreed upon by the apprenticeship committees, which comprise representatives of the employers and workers concerned in each case. Where any difficulty, such as ia mentioned by Mr. Wright, occurs, any of the parties concerned should apply to the Court of Arbitration for an amendment of the order fixing the proportion of apprentices. Amendments of orders relating to the proportion of apprentices have recently been made. "The Act provides means designed to ensure that apprentices shall be taught their trades thoroughly and the Count may order that any employer who it believes has not the facilities for teaching apprentices shall not be allowed to employ (.them, while it may allow other employers who can teach them properly, to have more than the average quota. The satisfactory working of the Act, however, lies largely in the hands of the committees, to which most of the powers, under the Act are delegated by the Court, subject to the right of appeal to the Court by any person affected. Unless the parties and the committies "work together for the public interest and future interests of their respective trades, unselfishly placing those interests above every other consideration, the Act cannot prove successful. The duty of employers in his respect was stressed by several representative employers in important industries, when the Act was under consideration. Some of these employers urged that among the moral obligations of the employers was the duty of undertaking the training of a sufficient number of apprentices to provide the requisite tradesmen of the future. Power is therefore given in the Act to the Court, when it thinks fit, to call upon employers in any trade to teach a certain number of apprentices. It will thus be seen that, as stated, the Act is a great improvement upon the previous law."