NEED FOR APPRENTICES

Grey River Argus, 24 March 1949, Page 4

NEED FOR APPRENTICES

Recently the Commissioner of Apprenticeship, in a visit to the West Coast, commented on the increasing interest being taken in apprenticeship contracts. Strangely enough, he remarked that with 13 baking trade apprentices, in this district, it had the highest number for any district outside Auckland and Wellington. Yet, the vocational guidance officer can say that there are vacancies, but that youths do not consider the trade an attractive one. Relatively high numbers arc also training in motor engineering, general engineering, electrical and furniture and plumbing trades. In practically all of these trades, however, the vocational guidance officer reports that there are many unsatisfied applicants, and it becomes necessary for the education authorities to give consideration to alternative trades for boys wishing to learn them.

Here is a matter which ought to concern some of the semi-public bodies which talk too much politics and too little commonsense. Why, for instance, with a relatively small population, should boys find it so difficult to follow their chosen career in a trade on the West Coast? Perhaps it is that members of these bodies are not interested in the aspect, of training tradesmen at all. They may prefer to see young men without a trade, but they should remember that, in times less prosperous than those now being enjoyed throughout the Dominion, tradesmen stand almost the only chance of continual employment. That there may be many wishing to enter trades, and unable to do so, may likewise have some connection with the advanced methods of daylight training now being gradually introduced into New Zealand. Employers of labour have given at least a Halfhearted welcome to this project, which is much more likely to give young men a thorough training in any trade than the slipshod methods of the past. It tends to reduce the hours in which a young worker is engaged solely for the benefit of his employer, but the long-range view ought to be taken that it fits an apprentice for much more advanced work in the concluding years of his apprenticeship. Thus, both worker and employer benefit in the long run.