APPRENTICESHIP DIFFICULTIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1931, Page 8

APPRENTICESHIP DIFFICULTIES.

Speakers at the conference of New Zealand manufacturers last week referred to the difficulty employers have in regard to the employment of apprentices. At present the number of apprentices in most trades is severely limited by Arbitration Court awards. The reasons for the limitation have been many. The principal, ostensibly, have been that it will prevent unscrupulous employers from exploiting boy labour to the detriment of the skilled artisan, and that it will ensure for the apprentices engaged full opportunity of a thorough training. Those were the ostensible reasons, but behind them was the desire to keep up wages and to make the employment of apprentices so hedged about with restrictions as to discourage rather than encourage the training of youths in the various trades and manufactures. That these shortsighted views have had an effect upon the opportunities afforded the young people of the Dominion is undoubted. So far from the engagement of apprentices being profitable, the average employer is well aware that it is extremely doubtful if it pays to train them. The idea of limiting the number to a ratio to the number of tradesmen employed is wholly unsound. It was one of the trade union ideas that could be tolerated when times were good and the public could afford to pay the higher prices for the work the various union fussinesses involved. The position is different to-day. Hundreds of boys are leaving school with no opportunity of acquiring a trade. For their own sakes, and they must be the country’s first

consideration, this is deplorable. Even if the prospects of employment at his trade are not bright a trained man is usually a more effective citizen than one who is untrained, and he has. a far wider scope for the employment of his talents if thev have been shaped by proper teaching of a craft. The suggestion of the manufacturers that the whole matter of the employment of apprentices should be reviewed deserves the support, not merely of employers, but of everyone interested in the wise development of the youth of the-Dominion.