JUVENILE LABOR

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17116, 23 November 1929, Page 6

JUVENILE LABOR

SEMI-SKILLED TRADES DIFFICULTIES TO OVERCOME (Special to the Herald.) CHRISTCHURCH, this day. Although Judge Frazer, in the Arbitration Court, suggested the building up of semi-skilled trades in New Zealand as a meaus of absorbing a good deal of boy and girl labor, thus solving a great problem, Mr. J. W. Graham, president of the Canterbury Employers’ Association, would like to see some more tangible suggestions jn this direction from from His Honor.

Commenting to-day on the remarks of the judge, M. Graham said that with the exception of unemployment there was no problem that the employers gave more atteniton to than that of the employment of boys. “A careful study of industrial conditions,” said Mr Graham, “seems to indicate that there is no way of absorbing boys, except on a full apprenticeship term, usually of five years, and there is no half-way job between that of apprentice and journeyman.” “A typical example of a semi-skilled trade can be found in the building industry, where laborer’s require many years of experience to become good allround builders’ laborers. There is no provision made for boys to be employed in any branch of flic building industry except as apprentices to the skilled branches. ; Everyone sympathises with the point of view of the skilled tradesman who endeavors to prevent his trade from being flooded with apprentices, b~ut probably a great deal of good could Ire accomplished if the various apprenticeship orders governing conditions of employment were made more flexible, and qualified employers \vbo were willing to employ a greater proportion of apprentices were not rigidly restricted in the proportion of apprentices they were allowed to engage. “Only recently it was proposed to establish a factory for the manufacture of dolls in New Zealand, of which some hundreds of thousands are imported annually. The employer spent some two years in studying manufacture and obtaining the technical knowledge necessary from the United States and Europe. He found, however, that, because of the restrictions in the employment, of semiskilled labor, which would be required in the finishing and dressing of the dolls, it would he hopeless to compete with the imported articles. Now he has begun operations in Australia.