The Evening Star MONDAY, MARCH 15, 1926. THE APPRENTICES ACT.

Evening Star, Issue 19198, 15 March 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star MONDAY, MARCH 15, 1926. THE APPRENTICES ACT.

Legislation needs trial hclore its operation can be pronounced a success or otherwise. Possibly not enough tiino has elapsed since the passage of the Apprentices Act of 1923 to enable judgment to be passed on it; but it has to be confessed that its results have not so far been what its sponsors claimed they would be. The main objects were to facilitate tbo learning of trades by youths on leaving school, and to put au end to tho bargaining between trades unions and employers as to tho terms of apprenticeship. Those conversant with conditions declare that in neither respect has the Act effected any improvement. One of tho means by which those objects were to he achieved was the apprenticeship committees. The Act provides for the voluntary establishment of these in any industry or group of industries, failing which the Arbitration Court may appoint them. So far as local experience goes, it may be said that though the committees exist they do not function, and there is no convincing evidence that this innovation has proved successful elsewhere. Even in cases where any activity has been displayed by a committee, its constitution, consisting of an equal number of representatives of employers and of workers, has perpetuated the bargaining clement which the Act sought to remove. It was largely on tho success of the working of those committees that tho placing of the apprenticeship problem on a bettor footing was felt to depend, and it is a matter for regret that the employers and workers have not entered into tho spirit which actuated the originators of tho idea of forming such committees. Employers are resentful of tho amount of State interference exerted through the medium of the Court of Arbitration, and workers are opposed to any risk of minimising the element of close corporation ensured to them by tho court’s limitation of tho number of apprentices in proportion to staffing. The deplorable result is that a number of youths seeking employment after leaving school find themselves shut out from trades, and arc forced into “dead end” occupations. The reasons given for this undesirable state of things vary in different parts of the dominion. Last month tho secretary of the Auckland Employers’ Association blamed the Apprentices Act and the operation of the quota system. He declared that in some trades the district quota was full, and that, though some employers were anxious to secure apprentices, they had on that account not been able to get their full number. Tho position was that employers were willing to employ a far greater number of lads than they were permitted to do, and train them well, and there was a superfluity of lads anxious to be trained. Thus tho law stood as a barrier between the young men and the trades in which they wanted to make good. Seeing that it was tho expressed intention of the Act to sorvo as a causeway and to remove barriers, there has obviously been yet another slip betwixt cup and lip. In Otago there has been no difficulty over the quota system, but the same ultimate undesirable feature of would-be apprentices unable to find openings presents itself. This is to ho found in such well-known trades as carpentering and painting. Employers do not seek apprentices, presumably because of the rate of pay prescribed by the court, especially in tho first year or two of apprenticeship. It has been urged that the position might be improved if there were a revision of these rates downwards in tho earlier years of apprenticeship and upwards in the later years, when the trainee is becoming of real uso to tho employer. Some years ago a good deal of concern was shown over tho disinclination of our youth to learn trades, and a largo measure of it was attributed to State action in the raising of rates for unskilled or semiskilled labor io levels which made the learning ol a trade relatively unattractive. Now, according to investigations, particularly in the north, it seems that out of tho largo number of hoys who left school last year with tho idea of entering trades tho proportion placed in employment is so small as to have been termed almost negligible. Tho complaint has been made that tho labor is offering, the employment is at hand, but Government regulations bar the way. In so vital a matter the Government must either disprove this allegation or remove all grounds for it should they he found to exist. The Government can no longer point to the Apprentices Act as proof of its good intentions over tho apprenticeship question or as a probable solution of it. That piece of legislation, principally through tho failure of the apprenticeship committees to function, has made matters no better —according to some observers it has made them worse. Some other moans will need to he devised to ensure a supply of adequately trained craftsmen for our industries in future years and to provide a hotter outlook for a youth than a “ dead end ” occupation or a period of damaging idleness at a critical time in character formation.