SKILL AT A PREMIUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 198, 22 August 1935, Page 18

SKILL AT A PREMIUM.

The instigators of the youth training classes state that its effect will be to decrease unemployment, amongst other things, and that they arc necessary to obtain skilled hands. This in spite of the fact that there are 12S skilled hands on the dole in one trade alone —due chiefly to youthful labour. A clear case to the contrary came to my notice this last week-end. I met a friend on Friday in Queen Street when he should have been working and learned he had been put off the Saturday before, making four men put off in two months. This man is in his middle thirties, a smart and skilled workman in his trade. His firm ie not in difficulties and is doing well, and no fault was found with him or any of the other three; they were just too many at senior ~ank. The firm had some little time ago filled up at the bottom with a number of boys and youths, and now in the reshuffle out go some of the senior hands from the top. Each of these men will shortly, in all probability, be on tho unemployed ranks, as onco out no matter how good one may be one has not a hope. Everywhere it is the same, full up of boys and juniors. So these four married men will be drawing the dole instead of doing their own job. How is this going to put down unemployment if each boy engaged is going to replace a man at the top? To absorb the boys without doing this, the whole of our industries must bo extended, and new ones started, "but this will not be clone while all this talk of free trade is about; the manufacturers cannot expand till the}' see clearly. An instance is the firm of motor furnishers down south, who in two or three years increased from six hands to 20, and now when they were contemplating enlarging premises to engage 60, the tariff on motors in a broken-down state is taken off, leaving them in tlie >ir, UMP.