Serving Their Time

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 455, 10 September 1928, Page 8

Serving Their Time

PROBLEM OF THE APPRENTICE IX calling employers and men together in W ellington tor September X> to discuss the affairs of apprentices, the Government lias fulfilled a promise it made when the Apprenticeship Act was passed five years ago. Progress will he reviewed and suggestions received for the amendment of the Act. The 16 apprenticeship committees operating in Auckland are reported, with few exceptions, to be working satisfactorily.

has been afforded during the past live years tor employers and workers to watch carefully the welfare of industrial apprentices, and every legislative facility has been given for the improvement of their position as potential units in the big, moving wheel of industry. Committees representative of both sides have given their services gratuitously toward this end, the members having been chosen for possessing intimate knowledge of conditions and requirements. In 1923, when the Apprenticeship Act was passed by Parliament, it was realised by the authorities that the institution of industrial apprenticeship committees was more or less an experiment, and that their success

would depend largely upon the spirit displayed by Capital and Labour respectively in the individual groups; and a promise was then made that after two or three years a conference would be called to discuss possible amendments. It was intended to call this meeting last year, but in view of the impending departure for England of the then Minister of Labour, the Hon. G. J. Anderson, it was shelved until a more convenient time. The acting-Minister of Labour, the Hon. R. A. Wright, has now undertaken this duty, and has summoned delegates to Wellington on September 25. Each district under the Act will be represented by its proportion of representatives, and remits for consideration of the delegates will be framed at preliminary meetings. Auckland will send four men to the conference,

the personnel of the delegation to be chosen at a meeting on Tuesday of next week. Preliminary machinery wiU be started by individual meetings of employers and employees for the discussion of their own viewpoints. Complaints have been made about the operation of the Apprenticeship Act, hut in the main the committees are reporting satisfactory work in Auckland. HARDSHIP ON BOYS Many difficulties necessarily have arisen in their administration, and the violent trade fluctuations caused by the industrial slump upset calculations throughout many big lines. Firms entered liquidation and threw their apprentices, along with the journeymen, on to the raod; others dismissed journeymen when trade became slack, and the proportion of apprentices rose above the journeymen employed; here and there an apprentice was dismissed for some reason, and the case was invariably investigated. Trade unions, in an endeavour to preserve the ratio of journeymen, were inclined to protest against the dislocation of the quota, but it was justly pointed out by the employers that business was so slack that men had to go—the alternative was liquidation. It will be suggested to the conference at Wellington that some safeguard be made for the protection of boys who are dismissed when a firm enters liquidation. If an amendment upon these lines were inserted in the Act, however, the equivalent would be reached of securing for a bankrupt’s creditors a return of their full 20s in the £ —a precarious precedent. BIG FIRM’S GENEROSITY Much depends upon the spirit of the employer—it has been so ever since apprentices were brought under legislation by the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1901 —and in almost every case strenuous efforts are made to place the indentured lads. In Auckland recently a big firm which went into voluntary liquidation underook full payment to all its apprentices until jobs had been secured for them. It went further, and in some cases subsidised other firm-; in the payment of wages until the new hands had become accustomed to the work. There are 16 apprenticeship committees in Auckland, operating in various trades, and while there appears to be little prospect of permanent harmony in one or two of them, the great majority produce a satisfactory result. Mr. W. Slaughter, head of the Labour Department here, who handles apprenticeship affairs, sums it up thus: “Generally speaking, the committees in Auckland have been doing good work to further the interests of the boys and of the employers, and to improve the industries concerned. True there are one or two where things have not gone well, but these are exceptional.”