PRINTERS CONFER

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 107, 2 November 1926, Page 6

PRINTERS CONFER

NEW. AWARD WANTED

APPRENTICES ANP WORKING "■■v CONDITIONS.

The biennial conference of the Typographical Federation opened in the 'Irades ffall yesterday, representatives from the Wellington, Auckland, Otago, and Southland unions b^iiig present. The president (Mr. E. H. Stickney) said the conference would have to draft claims for a new award, "A number of matters relating to award proposals will come up for consideration, including the vexed question as to what constitutes a probationer on a ooinposing machine," laid Mr. Stickney. ". . . . Arising out of the low award rates, for linotype operators and jobbing qompositors, the federation has been in communication with all English-speaking typographical unions for the purpose of placing the New Zealand award rates) before their memberships, so i that possible ■ visitors will be under no misapprehension, as to the real position. A number of. replies have been received from these organisations, thanking the federation for the information. ... APPRENTICESHIP QUESTION. "Since meeting two years ago at Dunedin, the federation has had no outstanding feature to record. Our main work as a federation has lieen to tender advice where asked for, to watch legislative enactments likely to affect the membership, and to come to some finality upon the apprenticeship, question, which has been arrived at by the filing of apprenticeship orders for the various' centres. I regret that this matter wag not settled before, but I can assure the delegates that it is not through the fault of the federation that a settlement was net fixed up-long ago. The Apprentices Act was passed in 1923, and it WaS not until 1926 that the federation could get the tmployers to seriously consider the matter However, the remit paper makes reference to the apprenticeship order question, when an opportunity will then be open for delegates to express their opinions on the position as they find it to-day. HYGIENIC PRINTING OFFICES. "We are glad to note, by the rebuilding of a number of printing offices in the Dominion, that the printing trade is in a prosperous cpndition. Owing to the high cost ql raw materials during the war period the printing trade did not carry a lot of watered capital as the result of war profits, and, consequently, the trade has been enabled to take'full-advantage of the growth of new lousiness since -the war and to reap the advantages of that growth, a part of which is reflected in the rebuilding of offices and the replacement of old plant by new and up-to-date machiner". I trust that in the reconstruction of printing offices regard will be had for the health of employees, who have to/spend a third of their daily lives under conditions which are not conducive to good health. I am glad to be able to record that in some cases efforts are and have been made by employers to mitigate the dangers to health which are attendant to the printing trade, by the erection of more up-to-date printing offices. "Matters relating to hygiene in printing offices will come op for discussion during the conference, and it is to be hoped that delegates will be seized with the importance of this question, for, without healthy surroundings while working, eood wages will not count for much if they have to be expended in repairing the ravages of an unhealthy trade."