PROTECTING APPRENTICES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 650, 30 April 1929, Page 12

PROTECTING APPRENTICES

ABUSES OF ACT ALLEGED Complaints that provisions under the Apprentices’ Act are being abused by some AuckLlid firms M ere made in the Arbitration Court yesterday during the hearing of apprenticeship appeals in the furniture trade. In some cases, said Mr. A. H. Dixon, secretary of the union, firms were going out of business, not because of bankruptcy or liquidation, but of closing down the cabinet-making and upholstering departments. This appeared a simple way for employers who wished to free themselves of apprentices of doing so when they had no further use for them. The apprentices committee in the the past had helped employers to place apprentices in cases of closing down, but the practice was becoming a habit. Instances were quoted of employers being in business nine months—the allotted time before an employer might engage an apprentice—and after registering an apprentice, applying to transfer him because of closing down. Some closed down as manufacturers and bought their furniture as .retailers. and others said that owing to lack of work they could not keep the apprentices employed. “It often means that journeymen are thrown out of jobs when the quota of other firms’ apprentices is added to. The competition of cheap boy labour is unfair,” said Mr. Dixon, who added that the committee had always assisted employers to place boys. His Honour agreed it was unfair, but said the onus was on the original employer to find employment for his apprentices when he went out of business. „ “The general order was not intended for cases of employers closing down, or changing their line of business,” said his Honour, “but for genuine cases of hardship.”