PLACEMENT OFFICER’S DAY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3801, 28 August 1936, Page 8

PLACEMENT OFFICER’S DAY

JOBS FOR THE LAME AND THE HALT. (Contributed.) My territory is wide flung and sparsely populated, and the roads stretch like ribbons over endless miles of terra that is anything but firm because of its constituent mud, and gravel buried inches deep. Our chief town is progressive, but its geographical situation is a check. However, employers must have employees, and so I spend full days and nights sorting the cream, but also the flootsam and jetsam ot' labour of all conceivable classifications, and sometimes no class at all. The general average of intelligence and ability of the men who enrol is quite remarkable.

My first “placement” was a flop. After considerable effort telephoning over long distances and negotiating tor an appointment, I had brought the employer (from ,40 miles away) and the employee (another ten miles iu the opposite direction) together in my office. Both were satisfied and eager, and only one thing remained—a notification to the lad’s parents. That, was the end of the “placement.” A stern father intervened, and the employer is still looking for a likely lad. My second venture had a more hopeful prospect. Long distance telephone conversations, several afteroffice hours calls and evening interviews, and I had gathered together the required labour—a “bush skiddy," a "ropey” and a timber stacker. All three were In my office ready for despatch. I ’phoned , the employer for final instructitms for this three-in-one advertisement, only to be told that he had put on three local men who had just turned up!

I’m still searching for a couple with five children, having interviewed almost every likely family for miles around. A father of four has been sent to be interviewed, but the employer insists upon five! Within a day or two of opening, my first registrations included a lad with only one hand, the left. Unemployed for two years, the case looked pretty hopeless, until visiting a local mill I saw a hunchback at work. This man’s employer and the maimed lad were brought together and the next day he was working (after the placement officer had made smooth' the path of his union permit) in a permanent, remunerative and congenial occupation. Four days later a one-armed lad presented the next difficult proposition. In less than one hour from the moment he entered for enrolment the lad had been spoken for, interviewed by telephone and engaged on the spot for an employer some thirty miles away, and at full award rates—with only one arm! If I’never make another placement I would feel well repaid by the expression of gratitude on the faces of those two lads.