GALLANT APPRENTICE

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 278, 19 August 1932, Page 3

GALLANT APPRENTICE

Jealousy in Shoe Factory TRADE UNION PROBLEM The Trade Union at Frosinone, In Italy, has been confronted with an unusual and delicate problem: “Is an employer justified in dismissing an apprenticed workman because his women workers fell in love with him?” The employer in the case owns a shoe factory, and for some months past he noticed growing discord and signs of jealousy among his women employees with consequent falling off in quality and quantity of work. Discreet inquiries revealed that the cause of all the unrest was that the whole female staff had fallen in love with Giuseppe, a handsome young apprentice. Thinking that to put Giuseppe out of sight would be to put him out of mind, the employer sent him home, but the apprentice appealed to the union for damages against his employer or reinstatement at work. In answer to the plea that it was not bis fault if all the women chose to fall in love with him, the employer responded with evidence that the apprentice was by no means passive in the matter, and that it was his habit to write impassioned billets doux to the women and use the toes of shoes as a convenient way of passing his messages and spreading jealousy. The Trade Union, however, has taken the gallant view. It has pronounced that to be loved wholesale is no offence, that the circulation of love declarations, even if widespread and unorthodox, does not justify dismissal, and it has ordered that Giuseppe be taken back into employment.