THE APPRENTICES ACT.

Evening Star, Issue 18866, 14 February 1925, Page 4

THE APPRENTICES ACT.

When in April, 1924, the Apprentices Act passed in tho previous session came into operation we expressed the conviction that it would bo on the apprenticeship yommitmittees that tho success of the new legislation would ■ depend. These, a new departure instituted by the Act, were to comprise representatives of both employers and workers, and where they were not established voluntarily they were to be set up compulsorily by the Arbitration Court. The latter body has not bestirred itself to exercise this prerogative, although it has had wide scope indeed. Probably its restraint has been wise. The same root cause beneath the failure to set up committees voluntarily would presumably

operate against their achieving anything, or even trying to achieve anything, if arbitrarily created. The. Minister of Labor evidently recognises this. Instead of recourse being had to constraint, he appeals to the employers to sot up committees and endeavor to make the Act workable, and says that, if fair trial proves it still unworkable, then it can be amended. Mr Anderson expresses keen disappointment with the failure of the Act so far, but if ho thinks failure can bo turned into success by mere legislative action in amending the Act we fear ho is destined to experience disappointment once again. The root of the trouble lies deeper than be seems to imagine.

From what can be ascertained, the present difficulty over apprentices is the culmination of a variety of causes. It is not confined to this country. It is acute also in Britain and in America. There is a growing disinclination of youths to apprentice themselves to trades, and there is reluctance on the part of employers to take those who do offer themselves on the terras stipulated, generally with legislative backing behind them. Our labor laws are held by some to have prejudiced industry. When first the Arbitration Court began its policy of the three-to-one ratio of journeymen to apprentices the opinion expressed by more than one farseeing employer was that the authorities wore going to make the cost of many ordinary and necessary services very dear before long. So it has proved. Again our Arbitration Court has set up such schedules of pay for apprentices, especially in the earlier years of their term, that employers have been loth to engage them. And at the same time the Arbitration Court has discouraged the learning of a trade and opened up an attractive avenue for those who normally should apprentice themselves by bringing the rates of pay for unskilled labor up to a level which shows a disproportionately small margin below those ruling for skilled labor.

There are also some who are inclined to blame our education system for the aversion to the artisan’s life unfortunately shown by present-day youth. It is urged that many boy's are pushed into secondary education when it would bo better themselves and for the community if the years they spend at a high school learning something that might fit them to become clerks or serve as a grounding for the study of a profession wore spent instead in the workshop learning a useful trade. For there can ho no comparison to-day between tho scope offered in flic overcrowded ‘‘black coat and quill pen” avocations and the undermanned pursuit* in which overalls are worn, it has even been suggested that much of the money which the State now spends on secondary education might be much more profitably employed in payment or part payment of apprentices’ wages. For on tho part of the employers it is being argued that tho Apprentices Act provides alt the machinery, but none of the finance, for tho thorough training of youth in artisanship, and it is objected that all the cost should I:4b fall on the employer—and ultimately on the public in tho form of increased cost of living.