APPRENTICE TRAINING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20363, 18 September 1929, Page 14

APPRENTICE TRAINING.

EMPLOYER'S APPEAL FAILS.

COMMENT BY THE COURT.

'J lie Electrical Service Company, contractors for the electrical work at the Civic Theatre, appealed to the Arbitration Court yesterday to reverse a decision of the Apprenticeship Committee. The company's application to the committee for a second apprentice was refused by the committee on the ground that the company had net sufficient facilities for teaching the trade. Mr. S. E. Wright represented the appellant company and Mr. M. P. O'Leary the Apprenticeship Committee. In dismissing the appeal, Mr. Justice Blair, president of the Court, said the case as put to the Court was entirely different from the case put to the Apprenticeship Committee. The case was put to the Court as if the Civic Theatre job was in the distance at the time tho application was made. It was not. Tho Civic Theatre was only an after affair, it being a special job within the meaning of the general order dealing with all theso apprenticeship contracts. It provided that when inquiry was made as to the proportion 01* apprentices no attention was paid to special jobs not likely to be repeated. "A person must be of a very sanguino temperament to imagine that he is going to have a Civic Theatre electrical job every year or two in Auckland," said His Honor.

The case as presented by Mr. R. Hunt, manager of the Electrical Service Company, misrepresented the position entirely, continued Ilis Honor. He had no right to mention the Civic Theatre job. His equipment consisted of a 20 x 18ft. shop with a trifling number of tools. He represented to the committee that ho had a Pnkemiro job, and it was now admitted that he had never had it. Tt. seemed to His Honor that the committee was absolutely right in tho decision to which it came. Tho committee was the judge. The Court could only hear an appeal when it was shown that tho committee had come to its conclusions 011 a wrong basis or applied a wrong viewpoint. That was not the case. Tho committee could not have done otherwise. The appeal would be -dismissed.