POPULAR TRADES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 130, 6 June 1927, Page 8

POPULAR TRADES

DAXGISK OF OVERCROWDING

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.")

CHRISTCHURCH; Thin Day

"The Arbitration Court must see that popular trades are not overcrowded in the interests of the boys themselves," said Mr. Justice Frazer in the Arbitration Court to-day. "It is certainly better for a boy to have a trade than to be at a dead end with unskilled work, but the Court must steer the boys into trades that are not overcrowded. The lads will get to like other trades once they get to know something of them." The Judge's remarks were evoked by statements made, by the secretary of the Master Builders' Association (Mr. W. H. Winsor), who, on behalf of the master bricklayers, applied for an order increasing the ratio of apprentices to journeymen in the bricklaying trade. Mr. Winsor said that as a member of the Technical College Board of Governors he was frequently approached by boys for employment. He asked the Court to consider what was to become of these boys. Were they to be absorbed in the trade or allowed to drift into blind alley occupations? ' The reply of Mr. Justice Frazer was that some trades were liable to be overcrowded. The Court must guard against too many boys being taken on at any one trade. They would serve their five years' apprenticeship, and then when no work was offering through an over-supply of tradesmen they would be forced out of the trade. The future of the boys Mas the main thing in the apprenticeship question. "Before the Court can make an order for an increase in the number of apprentices in the bricklaying trade," said the Judge, "it must be satisfied that the trade is not likely to decline."