BAKING TRADE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26842, 5 August 1948, Page 4

BAKING TRADE

PRODUCTION HAMPERED LACK OF. APPRENTICES Bakers in Dunedin are concerned at a serious lack of apprentices to the trade, and one man told the Daily Times yesterday that in his opinion a school of instruction was necessary tc* arouse some interest in the industry. If the position did not improve, he thought that the possibility of daylight baking might have to be investigated. The main objection to boys taking up apprenticeships with bread bakers appears to be the hours at which they have to start work, but a baker pointed out that when boys became tradesmen they commanded high wages. The trade to-day was being forced into the position where it had to consider adopting a higher standard of mechanisation to maintain its output, and owing to the lack of apprentices, more unskilled labour had to be employed. The baker • added that school subjects appeared to be directing the attention of boys to other trades, -and it also seemed that they were not aware that baking was becoming, under modern conditions and requirements, a scientific craft with wide variations and skills. Most of the hard toil formerly associated with bakery had been removed by mechanisation, and journeymen were now afforded an opportunity to take a course at the Wheat Research and Bakery School, in Christchurch. Another man said that the Wheat Research School was doing excellent work in assisting bread bakers to maintain the quality of their products in spite of the variations in the flour with which they were being supplied to-day. He frequently had samples of flour tested by the school to evolve methods of improving its baking qualities.