FUTURE TRADESMEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 27, 2 February 1943, Page 4

FUTURE TRADESMEN

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —I would like to express my thanks to your correspondent, John E. Hunt, for bringing to the notice of the public the problem that is now, and will in the future, confront our future tradesmen, and whilst agreeing in the main with the views expressed by your correspondent, I feel that the demand for tradesmen in some industries will not be so great in the future as one may expect. I am of the opinion that owing to the labour troubles that manufacturers are heir to, the factories of the near future will install every known machine devised to save labour. In Great Britain and the U.S.A. factories today are developing more and more machines to take the place of the skilled tradesman. Every factory will have to employ a certain number of highly-skilled men as key operators, and the balance of the labour will be semi-skilled and unskilled. However, it would be folly for us here in New Zealand to have any let up in the training of boys at the present time, and I fully agree that the Government has a grave responsibility to see that a modern Apprenticeship Act is formulated, and in the process of such an Act being framed the experience of men who have for many long years been training boys should be obtained —I am, etc.,

, ENGINEER

Sir —Your correspondents, Messrs. John'E. Hunt and T. F. Gebbie, general secretary, Railway Tradesmen's Association, are rather perturbed at the admittedly low wages paid to tradesmen, and the future of the apprentice. However, neither offer any solution to the problem which contains more than one headache, although, the solution of the economic disadvantages of the tradesman would to a very great extent solve that of the apprentice. Here is where the rub comes in regarding more pay for the tradesman, and I fancy Mr. Gebbie is well acquainted with the stubborn facts, viz.—Raise the pay of the tradesman, and what then/ Industrial unionism comes on the scene, and demands an equivalent increase for the unskilled workers. Needless to say, the craft unions for political reasons cannot oppose the claim, and in the ultimate all that eventuates is an all round increase in wages, and the tradesman's economic relationship to his unskilled fellow-unionist remains the same. ' Regarding the Apprenticeship Act, it is a democratic paradox that penalises many of the most promising youths that cannot get the necessary backing to serve an apprenticeship, and unless I am a very bad judge.and totally blind, not a few of the most highly-skilled men and women who never served a day's legal apprenticeship are today the* backbone of the war effort, and one need not go outside of New Zealand to find some of them. I say unhesitatingly that the tradesmen can thank themselves for the position they are in. Can Mr. Gebbie justify the antiquated idea that because a youth cannot serve a legal apprenticeship he cannot become a tradesman of the highest order? For the last 40 years the craft unions in Great Briain have accepted as junior members youths from 16 yearS of age, who were obliged to go from shop to shop as improvers, and on reaching the age of 21 years, on the recommendtion of two members of any branch of the union were accepted as full members. That is how it should be, and no man should have the right to say to any youth: "If you have not complied with our exact rules, so far shall you go, but no further."—l am, etc.,

H. E. CHILDS