BOYS' PROBLEM

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 29, 4 February 1943, Page 4

BOYS' PROBLEM

SEEKING EMPLOYMENT

EFFECT OF FUTURE CALL-UP

Many boys of 16 and 17, who have just left school, are in an unenviable position to-day. Because army service is ahead for them when they turn 18, many employers find it unprofitable to train them. In other trades, where apprenticeship is required, though employers are in urgent need of boys, they cannot take them on because they already have their quota of apprentices. It is, therefore, a vicious circle. The boys want the jobs and the employers want the boys, but prewar industrial laws are a barrier under war conditions.

An exception, however, is the engineering tr&de. One engineering firm doing 100 per cent war work has had apprentices released from camp, and has taken on others recently. It has found that if a boy has made good progress the firm's appeal meets with sympathetic hearing. Another engineering firm reported that its quota of apprentices was full, some of those concerned being in the army. As the number of apprentices employed must bear a definite ratio to the number of qualified tradesmen, when tradesmen are taken into the forces no more apprentices can be taken on. "We have boys on our waiting list, and we want them as badly as anybody, but because we have 10 apprentices in the army who are not yet through their apprenticeship the Labour Department will not give us permission to employ any more," said a representative of this firm. The manager of a large warehouse which had not been declared essential said boys were so scarce that they were glad to get them, even though they might lose them in six or twelve months. Girls were almost as hard to get as boys, he said.

Two bank representatives revealed differing conditions. One said his bank did not require so many boys now, as it had enough girls, who were doing excellent work. "As long as we can get girls we find it more profitable to train them than young boys, who will be taken by the army or air force within a short time," he said. The other authority said his bank had taken on four boys of 16 to 17 within the last month. Another opinion Avas expressed that boys aged 16 would probably have a better chance of being employed than those who were a year older owing to the brighter prospects of the war being over within two years.