SKILLED WORKERS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 104, 4 May 1935, Page 15

SKILLED WORKERS

THEIR COMMUNITY VALUE

WHAT WE OWE TO RAILWAYS

Does the average New Zealander realise the part played by the railways in building up an industrial community (skilled mechanics, technicians, and professional men) in New Zealand? Does the average railwayman himself realise it?

There was not a very great volume of metal-using and metal-working industry in New Zealand when the railways started. The country was not mechanically minded nor mathematically inclined. But railway transport soon became an important industry. Only in latter years has a great rival transport industry arisen to share with the railways the task of giving young New Zealand a mechanical bent. But the motor industry has produced a different kind of mechanic, and does not manufacture locally its own engines, etc. And the road-using industry has not yet established an internal tuition and training system for its skilled men. The Railway Department has.

, A reminder of the latter fact is given by a statement of the General Manager of Railways, Mr. G. H. Mackley, in the May issue of the "New Zealand Railways Magazine." In his monthly message, Mr! Mackley points out that the safety tradition of the railways is based in the first place on training:

"Every railwayman must be efficient in his own work, and probably no employer applies more constant tests in this matter than does the Railway Department. First, every person joining the service must be physically fit, as attested by a comprehensive medical certificate. Then he must have educational qualifications. Cadets accepted in recent years are up to the matriculation or higher leaving certificate standard of the colleges, or have specialised qualifications in engineering, accountancy, or other of the professions. Professional members of the service frequently hold the highest executive positions in respective Dominion associations. The service itself carries on a system of tuition, training, and examination which ensures that only fully qualified men can reach controlling positions in the Department. This applies also to the workshops and to all staffs engaged in train operations, in traffic handling, and in any commercial dealings with the public.

"Part of .the training of a traffic man, as well as the incidence of promotion, necessitates transfer,, from time to time, to different positions in the service and to different places in the Dominion. Besides this, the facilities which the Department affords its employees for travel at the time of their annual leave encourages railwaymen and their families to visit other parts of the country, The general result is that the average railwayman not only has a- personal knowledge of the physical features of the Dominion but also is particularly well informed upon matters of general public interest. Hence, in whatever locality he may be placed, he has the standing to which a wide range of knowledge and experience entitles him."

Yet, at the,same time, the railways service is, to an extent, a "silent service." A railway system is a great machine, and those who operate it tend to have the silence as well as the efficiency of machinery— partly a result of the industrial noise amia which they work. While economy of speech suits their labours, they need not be silent in the general community, at a time when the community is faced with 'rapidly changing conditions." The General Manager concludes: "I feel that railwayrnen, to the extent that they increasingly realise and exercise the influence that is rightly theirs through personal .worth and occupational association, can attain a still higher state of personal development and be of stilly greater usefulness to he organisation and the public whom they serve."