TRAINING DOMESTIC WORKERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1917, Page 6

TRAINING DOMESTIC WORKERS.

A f.iODl) PROPOSAL. (Special Correspondent). Wellington, Nov. "21. The decision of the Arbitration Court. mi Auckland to embody in an industrial agreement a clause providing a system of training for domestic workers has aroused a considerable amount of interest in Wellington. It has long been a ground of complaint by hotel-keepers, boarding-house proprietors and housewives that while the wages demanded by female domestic workers have risen greatly, the standard of skill has tended to decline. Domestic servants of any kind are hard to find; thoroughly competent ones are rare.

"There really is no standard of training or accomplishment among the domestic workers at the present time." said a Wellington hotel-keeper when the matter was mentioned to him. "Girls may acquire some elementary knowledge in their homes —they seldom acquire very much, in my experience—and then they think that they are competent servants. They expect to get full wages almost at once, and the scarcity of help is so marked that employers often are compelled to supply the wages as well as the training. The Auckland proposal"looks to me a good one. The girls will serve for two years as probationers with a graduated scale of wages and during that time they will be required to attend technical classes and so acquire real knowledge of their work. The insistence upon training is more important from our point of view than the wages." The agreement endqrsed by the Arbitration Court in Auckland appears to [apply only to private hotels, but if it proves successful it is likely to be oxtended in its cope. "If Wellington women who employ help in their homes could secure an agreement of that kind it would l)e worth our while reviving the effort to create a stron? Housewives' Union," said a lady yesterday. "The relations between the girls and the mistresses are not on a proper footing at all at the present time. We have to take almost any sort of help that we can get, and no definite standard of service exsit.s. A girl would not think of demanding the wages of a competent dressmaker without first acquiring the necessary training, but she thinks herself entitled to from los to '2os a week, plus her keep, in domestic service if she knows how to Wash dishes and peel potatoes. I think 1 am speaking for a good many Wellington women when T say that if wc could employ thoroughly capable young women. provided with some certificate of efficiency on which we could rclv, we would even pay some increase in wages with light hearts."