A DIFFICULT PROBLEM

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 10 March 1928, Page 11

A DIFFICULT PROBLEM

VX/IHTING in. “The New Zealand • Industrial Bulletin,” Mr S. E. Wright, secretary of the Auckland Employers' Association, has some very trenchant remarks to make about the failure of the apprenticeship regulations as now in force.

After reviewing the Dominion’s educational system, he goes on to say: “A few years ago the apprenticeship system had at least tire merit of simplicity. Though it was admittedly in some ways inefficient, this could have been probaftJly overcome Very easily. At the time referred to an employer could take on a bov as apprentice without any formality. At the end of three months, however, if the employer, the boy, and the boy’s parents were willing, the factory inspector had to be notified of the employer’s intention to keep on the boy for the balance of his term of apprenticeship—five years. This became, for all practical purposes, a contract of apprenticeship, and, in the majority of eases, worked satisfactorily. The factory inspector could prevent a boy leaving his employer without good reason and could also have, no doubt, prevented an employer from dismissing a boy without showing cause. The weakness of the system was that the inspector had not sufficient power to decide in the first, place whether an employer was a fit and proper person and had in his shop or works a sufficient staff and facilities for teaching apprentices. OBSOLETE SYSTEM*

“It would have been a comparatively easy matter to have invested the inspector as Registrar of Apprentices, with sufficient powers to have prevented any abuses, and to have laid down a few approved rules for his guidance; also to have provided some appeal either to the Arbitration Court or some other tribunal in the probably very rare cases whether either employers or apprentices were dissatisfied with his ruling. Instead of this, an Act lias been passed which not only ties down flic employer to an indenture system which has years since been obsolete, but appointing at the same time committees of very unstable constitution, and raising side issues as to compul-

TRAINING APPRENTICES

sorr attendance at technical schools and other matters which tend to leave the employer uncertain whether he is teaching the boy his trade, or whether ■the technical schools are doing iv; whether he or the Apprenticeship Committees are controlling the apprentice. The only point left clear is that the employer has to pay the wages and comply with the regulations and restrictions as may be made from time to time. EMPLOYERS ’ LIMITED CONTROL. “ Still more serious is the effect on the boy, who is quick to realise that the ‘boss’ has very limited control over him, cannot dismiss him without considerable trouble, and the boy is too often (under bad guidance) quick .to take advantage of this. Hence the complaints about unsatisfactory behaviour of apprentices, and the reluctance of employers to take them on. In some parts of the world —•America for instance —the apprenticeship system is dead. It will not take much to kill it in New Zealand, though tnis would be a calamity, not only for the youth of the country but for its industries. In the larger and more populous countries automatic and semi-automatic machinery run by intelligent labourers, taught only to run one particular machine and. paid according to output, is found to be more economically sound than the employment of apprentices, with the necessity for their strict and careful supervision, but the industries in New Zealand are for the most part too small to warrant the heavy expenditure for' up-to-date automatic, machinery. The output is too limited, and in any case the system does not tend towards the training of artisans or the relief of unemployment.

“New Zealanrt manufacturing industries. for some years to come, can only survive if a reasonable percentage of apprentice labour is not only allowed but encouraged. As employers arc practically unanimous that, the present legislation and restrictions not only discourage but tend to make impracticable the employment of . apprentices, it is not too much to ask that the whole legislation be very carefully considered with a view to some radical amendments. ’ ’