Educating Unionists

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31315, 10 March 1967, Page 3

Educating Unionists

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, Mar. 9. The Minister of Labour (Mr Shand) and Dr. Joseph Mire, of Washington, an authority on and advocate for education in the trade union movement, found their ideas had much in common when they met informally in the Minister’s office this afternoon.

Dr. Mire is research professor of economics at the American University of Washington and executive director of the National Institute of Labour Education at the University. He is in New Zealand on the invitation of the New Zealand universities to study, for six or eight weeks, the nature and the needs of trade union education in this country. He will visit various main centres including Christ ch urch tomorrow, Dunedin, Invercargill, and Auckland. Dr. Mire is working in cooperation with the Federation of Labour.

“At one time young men of outstanding ability but through no fault of their own, with little or no education, came to the top and made their contribution to society through the trade union movement,” Mr Shand said. “Now the danger is that young people of that calibre and with a labour background go to university, graduate with honours degrees—and then work for the employers. Not that they are not needed there, and not that they do not make a significant contribution, but they are needed in unionism too, and there is still a first-class contribution to the progress of our society to be made through the union movement.” The Minister added: “Of course there is a need for the labour people to recognise the value of first-class education and to be prepared to reward it for work within their own ranks.”

Union leaders in particular, and members of their professional and office staffs nowa-

(days had to have the best in States, and he thought probabeducation and skills to cope ly in New Zealand too, a very fully with their complex re- great need for an awareness sponsibilities, Dr. Mire said, among trade unionists of the There was in the United importance of education.