APPRENTICE PROBLEMS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19141, 6 October 1925, Page 12

APPRENTICE PROBLEMS

ALLOWANCE UNDER AWARDS. REQUESTS FOR VARIATION, COURT RESERVES DECISION. The adjustment of the proportion of apprentices to the number of journeymen employed in the Auckland district in the plumbing, furniture and electrical and engineering trades was the principal question considered by the. Arbitration Court at yesterday's sitting. Mr. Justice Frazer presided, with Messrs. H. Hunter and W. Scott as assessors. An application was made by tho Plumbers' Association of Employers that the proportion of apprentices allowed by the current award should be increased. The district proportion was one apprentice to three journeymen; that to the individual shops was one to the shop, and ono to every two journeymen and fraction of two, a shop with ono working employer and ono journeyman to have two apprentices. It was explained that the district proportion did not allow shops to have their individual proportions, and that, as tho district proportion was now filled up, would-be apprentices desirous of learning the trade could not be taken on. It w,-is therefore asked that the district proportion should be amended to one apprentice to one journeyman. Mr. S. E. Wright, on behalf of the employers, dissected from a suggestion made by Mr. Hunter that the matter should be left to the Apprentices Committee, on the ground that that would be unsatisfactory with tho present constitution of the committee. Mr. J. Clarke, representative of the Plumbers' Union, opposed the application. With regard to a similar application by the employers in the furniture trade, it was stated that the present district proportion was ono apprentice to three journeymen. The employers sgught that it should be altered to one to one. Mr. Clarke again appeared for the union, and offered reasons why the application should be refused. On behalf of the Engineers' Union (Mr. R. S. Barter), an application was made that tho allowance of two fitter apprentices to one journeyman should be reduced to ono to every three journeymen. It was pointed out that there were a number of journeymen oat of employment, while others had left the trade. Mr. Wright, for the employers, claimed that although a boy possibly did not find work at tho trade immediately after the completion of his apprenticeship, he was a better worker for the training he had received. If the number of apprentices were curtailed, numbers of boys desirous of receiving training would drift into dead-end occupations. A similar application was made by tho Electricians' Union, for which, also, Mr. Barter appeared. Mr. Wright, for the employers, urged that there were now no journeymen out of employment in the district, and that as the present one-to-one proportion had not created a surplus of journeymen, it was not likely, with the present prospects of electrical development in Auckland, that the training of ' journeymen would be out of proportion ' to the requirements of the trade. In each instance the Court reserved its decision. A number of appeals by would-be apprentices from decisions of the registrar in regard to their cases were held over, pending the judgments of the Court upon the main questions.