Industrial Recruits

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 773, 20 September 1929, Page 8

Industrial Recruits

Finding Work for Apprentices IT was claimed in a return presented to Parliament a day or two ago that if employers in New Zealand accepted the full quota of apprentices allowed by law, there would be just on 20,000 apprenticed lads in work, or double the existing number. Such a superficial analysis hardly elucidates the Dominion’s apprenticeship problems, however, as many firms in certain trades in Auckland alone find themselves with more apprentices than journeymen.

The return given in the House of Representatives shows that at the present time there are 9,943 apprentices working in the Dominion. Journeymen and employers for whom apprentices are allowed total 31,773, which gives a proportion of 3.2 journeymen to one apprentice. It was stated supplementary to this return that if employers engaged the full quota under the law there would he 19,931 apprentices in jobs throughout the country. This seemingly extraordinary statement might be explained by the fact that in many instances a one-man business is allowed one apprentice, and the department has apparently assumed that, however uneconomic it would be for that business to employ . an apprentice, the law allows it,' and therefore industry is not using as many apprentices as it is entitled to engage. No explanation of this fact is forthcoming from the Auckland office of the Labour Department, where the officer-in-charge, Mr. W. Slaughter, declines to give any information whatever ,on the subject of apprentices in this city. PROSPERITY WITH UNEMPLOYMENT Those who are closely in touch with industrial conditions here, however, are well aware that the apprenticeship problem is one of the most perplexing that has yet called for solution, and, bound up as it is with the general industrial instability, it cannot be solved by a rigid application of the lawful quota of boys to skilled men. Industry in New Zealand, it is now recognised, has reached that point at which it is possible to have prosperity as well as unemployment. But when excessive unemployment overspread this country ana skilled tradesmen lost their jobs in thousands, employers were unable to discharge their apprentices, with the result that in Auckland today there are some branches of certain trades which are being conducted almost entirely by apprentices. Improvement in the conditions of journeymen, then, must be created before there can be an improved outlook for apprentices. Many individual employers—builders, to quote specific examples—chose the less complicated way out, and gave up business, and with the demise of their undertakings went the apprentices on to the labour market. Others are still struggling, and on more than one occasion father and son —-one a skilled tradesman and

the other au unemployed apprentice —have competed strongly for the same position. It is readily appreciated that, assuming the Parliamentary return to be correct, there is little room for more apprentices in the majority of trades in New Zealand. On the contrary, those who take a particularly keen interest in this problem are virtually at the limit of their initiative in seeking a permanent solution. “We are nearly worried to death in trying to find a way out for the boys who are coming on,” said Mr. T. Bloodworth, who is keenly active upon apprenticeship questions in Auckland. Another factor which bears a marked influence upon apprenticeship is the changing condition of industry, not only in New Zealand, but throughout the whole world. In some overseas countries it has been found that the high degree of specialisation in most trades has necessitated a modification of the apprenticeship system in the direction of a shorter term of training confined to the particular branch in which the trainee intends to work. MORE PRODUCED WITH FEWER MEN Canada, where industrial conditions are, for all practical purposes, analogous to those in New Zealand, has been fortunate in the absorption of her surplus apprentices. The apprenticeship system was dropped in the United States, and when the shortage of work became acute in Canada, the greater part of the surplus boylabour crossed the border and found work in the highly industrialised cities of the States. The intense mechanisation of industry all over the world has led economists to predict that eventually the pendulum of production method will swing, in a moderate degree, of course, back toward the greater employment of human craftsmanship. In America and England already builders have been commissioned upon jobs with elaborate period finishings which cannot be executed by machinery. In New Zealand, however, where prosperity is not so apparent, the individual builder will justifiably consider the saving in production costs entailed by mechanical methods. When it is proved that industries in the United States of America, with 11 per cent, fewer manual workers, produced in T 927 26 per cent, more goods than they produced in 1919, it induces serious thought for the economic security of the future industrial "trainee in New Zealand. L.J.C.