DEARTH OF APPRENTICES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 276, 20 November 1926, Page 20

DEARTH OF APPRENTICES.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —As a member of the Apprentices Committee I read with interest Mr. Rowley's report and your article on the unwanted apprentice and the boys not being given a chance to learn trades. The Apprentices Act was certainly intended to advance the apprentices and to further their chances of learning a trade. I must bear witness that the Building Trades Committee in Auckland worked assiduously to further the boys' interests, with very poor results. As Mr. Rowley says, apprentices t are not wanted as they should be, and in my opinion we suffer from over legislation, regulations piling on industry day by day, forcing employers to be more assiduous in making their businesses pay, either by cutting out all sources of leakage, or by importing where manufacturing does not pay. It comes to this: If apprentices cannot be made to pay they are not wanted. Our apprentices' regulation does not allow moro than one apprentice to two jurneymen to any one employer, or more than one to three over the industry, and this is a very serious restriction. In the old days our firm employed very few apprentices, about one to ten or twelve, whilst our contemporary employed say one to one, because in both cases the class of busi- ", ess ca * ere 4, for suited this arrangement;; it suited both parties, and hoys were trained. Now we are exported to xi°s oH ° -hethe? it Us us or not. Moreover, the question of temperament comes in. Some" employers are unfitted to train apprentice! * I™ the foolishness of our labour legislation we assume that every employer, fitted or otherwise, should take apprentices and tram them. The result is a certain though gradual restriction of skilled labour, with its natural corollary in increased prices of production, or alternately encouragement of importation, and the forcing of an ever increasing number into unskilled labour. This briDgs mc to the very, serious questioii as to whether our labour legislation is not defeating itself, making for th< benefit of the. few skilled tradesmen ni the expense of tho great mass ol unskilled labour, who form such a bi< percentage of the general public—l am et(N, WM. PARKINSON.