Arbitration Court Penalty Of £10 Imposed On Apprentice

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30677, 17 February 1965, Page 14

Arbitration Court Penalty Of £10 Imposed On Apprentice

A penalty of £lO was imposed on Richard Harry Neal, an apprentice newspaper machine typographer, in the Arbitration Court yesterday for the breach of a printing industry apprenticeship order. The claim for a penalty was made by the District Commissioner of Apprenticeship (Mr V. E. Thomas). Neal was not represented by counsel.

With Judge Blair on the bench were Messrs A. B. Grant (workers’ representative) and W. N. Hewitt (employers’ representative).

Mr Thomas said that Neal had been ordered to enrol in an Education Department technical correspondence course as required in the newspaper machine typography branch of the printing industry. He had been slow to enrol and when he did so his work had been unsatisfactory from the start. This pattern had continued during the whole of Neal’s apprenticeship. Penaties had been imposed by the local apprenticeship committee but these had had no effect

"This is the worst case we have had in any trade in the Canterbury area,” Mr Thomas said.

A. E. Saville, a Technical Correspondence Institute tutor, said that the institute could spend no more time on Neal. Neal’s record card showed that two reminders to complete assignments had been sent to him in his first year, 11 in the second and 15 in the third. Fourteen notices had been sent to the District Commissioner of Apprenticeship in the fourth year, and five in the fifth. In all the 23 assignments received had cost 46 letters or' administrative notices. The average apprentice completed 60 assignments in about three years.

Saville said that Neal’s record was one of the two worst in the printing apprenticeship course in New Zealand. Neal told the Court that he had no explanation to offer. When pressed to make some explanation, he said he thought he would finish with school work when he left school.

In imposing the penalty, Judge Blair said he had to take into account the deterrent effect it would have on other apprentices. Decision Reserved

Decision was reserved on an appeal by Brian John Moffat, a builder, of Ashburton (Mr R. G. Blunt), from a decision of the North Canterbury Carpentry and Joinery Apprenticeship Committee refusing consent to the apprenticeship of David Eric Kirkman, of Ashburton. The committee refused the apprenticeship on the grounds that the appellant had not been in business on his own account for two years, and that it was not satisfied he was in an assured position to continue as an employer. Dismissed An appeal by Ray’s Panelbeating Company, Ltd., of Greymouth, from a decision of the Canterbury and Westland Coach and Motor Body Building Apprenticeship Committee refusing consent to the apprenticeship of J. L. Moore was dismissed.

Judge Blair said he was satisfied the committee had acted in the best interests of the boy. “I hope, however, that in the fullness of time you will be able to go to the committee again and take this youth on as an apprentice,”