NEED FOR UNSKILLED WORKERS

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 223, 8 June 1923, Page 10

NEED FOR UNSKILLED WORKERS

“SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC NEGLECT” ' IS EDUCATION SYSTEM DEFECTIVE? Reporting last night to the Central Progress League, that there had been an increase in unemployment, the secretary (Mr. G. Mitchell) deplored the scarcity of skillcxj. workers. “The great difficulty,” he said, “is always the unskilled men who are not fit for heavy work. While these men are walking about looking for work, there has not been one competent tradesman call here, and some trades are very short of skilled workers. Wo have far too. manv casual workers and not sufficient tradesmen, which means a great loss in national efficiency, together with distress and want among the unskilled workers and their dependants. Every pathetic appeal for light unskilled work brings home to one our social and economic neglect in not providing for, and even insisting on, many more of these men learning trades. Let us hope that the lesson of the past teaches us to remedy this wrong in the future.” The chairman (Mr. W. H. Bennett) referred to a scheme being put into operation in Australia, under which men were being trained by employers as bricklayers. One of the chief causes for the shortage of skilled workers in New Zealand lay in the desire of parents to make their children wageearners at an early age. When tho youths looked for more remuneration at a later age, it was too late for them to go in for skilled work. Master builders and carpenters were now negotiating, through the Arbitration Court, to get more youths in the building trade. “You could not get a bricklayer if you walked from end to eud of Wellington,” added the chairman. “The Government will have to come to the assistance of the skilled trades, so that, when boys are leaving school they may go to a continuation school, to learn the groundwork of a skilled trade. Employers have a liability too. They do not worry about securing a supply of artisans for the future.” A member of the committee expressed the opinion that the technical school should be raised to the plane of the secondary school, for in it the ideal of culture aimed at in the secondary school, could be secured just as easily, while the supply of skilled workers would be assured. It was resolved to ask the Government to use all available labour on strengthening and improving the road from Johnsonville to Pahautanui, also to request the co-operation of master carriers and the Automobile Association.