FAIR TRIAL NEEDED

Evening Star, Issue 19409, 18 November 1926, Page 14

FAIR TRIAL NEEDED

THE APPRENTICES ACT A WARM DEFENCE [Special to the ‘ Star.’] CHRISTCHURCH. November 17. The view expressed fay Mr F. W. Rowley, Registrar of Apprentices and Secretary for Labor, in an address at Wellington yesterday, that the Apprentices Act had proved a failure is not shared by Mr E. O. Sutcliffe, secretary of the Canterbury branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, and a member of the Christchurch Carpenters’ Apprentices’ Committee. , Mr Sutcliffe said to-day that he thought it was very ill-advised of Mr Rowley to have criticised the Act in such a manner before it had been given a fair trial, and had at least run the full period of the average apprenticeship of five years. With reference to the Apprentices’ Committee, with which he was personally associated, he was able to say that there was a desire that the Act should bo allowed a fair opportunity of being tried out before being condemned as a failure. That, also, was the attitude of several other apprentices’ committees in Christchurch. The trade unions had all refrained from criticising the_ Act adversely, because they recognised it was impossible to plant a tree and expect a full crop of fruit in a couple of years’ time., “ The Apprentices’ Act is experimental ho said, _ “ and, like all other experimental legislation, has its defects. These defects can only be remedied by experience, and to bring out the full benefits of the Apprentices’ Act the Legislature requires to amend the Act quite frequently.” Other _experimental legislation, such as the Factories’ Act and Arbitration Act, was amended every year while these Acts were in their infancy. The Apprentices? Act was welcomed by the average trade unionist in New Zealand as being an honest attempt to remedy a system which had fallen into very bad ways. The chief complaint made by Mr Rowley was that there was not a sufficient number of boys employed under the provisions of the Act, but Mr Rowley seemed to forget that it was better to have a hundred boys employed at a trade and learning it thoroughly than to have twice that number thrown into a trade under no restrictions whatever, given a partial training, and then thrown out only partially trained, and having to relearn their trade. Under a system of underrate permits recently an effort was made to enlarge the proportion of apprentices in a certain section of the building trade, and it was shown that the present proportion of one to three (or fraction of three) was not filled by about 140. “The success or otherwise of the Apprentices’ Act, in _my opinion,” said Mr Sutcliffe, “ lies in this feature—that the employers’ and workers’ sections of the committees will have to work together to endeavor not, perhaps, to produce more tradesmen, but to produce more efficient tradesmen. If tnis becomes the ultimate effect of the Apprentices’ Act, it will have done good work.”