Youth Employment

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 70, 15 December 1932, Page 11

Youth Employment

Sir, —The position of youth employ* meut to-day is a logical result of the false premises on which labour legislation based. While business was normal, al! except apprenticeships was apparently right, but with unemployment, former blessings are proving curses. The Arbitration Court presumed that an employer owned his business, also that by working in it, tbe employee acquired rights in an industry. Nominally a man owns a business— actually he is its most willing ami eager servant, but the employee does not recognise a duty to the industry past the day’s work. The employee expects all the industry can possibly give, and ignores any responsibility for bis industry s future, an idea created by the Arbitration Court, which did not realise that industry contains three partners, employee, employer and necessary capital. When one partner is injured, all are injured, resulting in national loss. The truth of this conclusion is shown in the cost of city services to the farmer. Wages and conditions are based upon supposed necessities of the city dweller, without any care for the interests of the producers, and, even to-day, when the nation is in difficulties, through the fall in values of produce, the same argument—comfort of the city worker—is held paramount. Labour will be compelled by circumstances to realise that until tbe main industry —farming—is carried on. at a profit, internal juggling with wages, etc., is useless, when the earning partner is not. making any new money, and local money is becoming less through taxation. Tbe position of youth to-day was foreseen in early arbitration days, and it, too, is only the result of the same false premises. When unions denied responsibility for industry, they cancelled all right to interfere with employment,' but under the cry of cheap labour, the court made youth employment expensive, and added unjust cost to industry by compelling the labour of man when the youth would be equally useful. It is the irony of fate that the families of the beneficiaries are the sufferers of to-day, and that the court’s short-sightedness should be one cause- of difficulty in righting national economy.—l am. etc TRADESMAN. December 12.