INJUSTICE TO APPRENTICES.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 227, 17 January 1885, Page 4

INJUSTICE TO APPRENTICES.

Many apprentices in different trades iv Auckland complain of the harsh and unjust treatment they experience on the completion of their indentures. Their employers get the benefit of their labour at boys' wages until they reach the age of manhood, and then, instead of providing them with, permanent work at journeymen's pay, turn them adrift, taking on fresh apprentices to fill the vacancies. Such treatment as this is mean and dishonourrble. During the latter term of their service the apprentices, if they are properly instructed and exhibit any aptitude for their work, are nearly, if not quite, as efficient as journeymen who are paid the current wages of men. Of course, in the case of idle and careless apprentices the masters are perfectly justified in dispensing with their services on completion of their indentures, but in the former case such conduct is selfish and dishonest. Though it may be right in the majority of cases to give the preference to efficient workmen with ■wives and families dependent on them for support, the system of employing boy labour to excess should be checked by law, as it tends to shut men out of employment. Instances have come to my knowledge in Auckland in which young men who have become efficient workmen after five or more years in trades in which the demand for labour is limited, have been callously turned adrift, and forced to turn their hands to other branches of employment to which they were unaccustomed, while their places have been supplied by boys.