Trade- off is changing
IT was interesting to listen to the CEO of the Business Council of Australia in her speech at the National Press Club recently and her remarks about jobs and education. She also centred on future jobs and in particular apprentices and their training.
I was a product of the fiveyear apprenticeship for electricians in 1947 with the CREB in Cairns.
Born and bred into farm life in Tenterfield and Mareeba and one of nine children to a long list of Sawtell farmers who can be traced back to 1733 in Somerset in England, and two brothers and a sister migrated to Australia in 1849 to uncleared land in the Kangaloon part of New South Wales.
Consequently, when I started work the pay was 25 shillings and I had to pay 30 shillings for board in Cairns.
My first job was in the workshop repairing transformers where extra pay was a shilling a day for eight hours for dirt money. Or if I was transferred to the line gang I was paid an extra shilling a day if we lifted a pole each day. That meant I was able to pay my board each week.
This meant even though pay was increased each year I could not go anywhere for social events. All education was by correspondence and we all went to night school one night a week.
Later apprenticeships changed when government introduced compulsory schooling during work hours and it meant small contractors with one apprentice were on their own.
Consequently contractors started using other tradesmen from time to time to help to do jobs when it took two people.
This has led to a decline in apprentices in the workforce. This affected TAFE.
It also was evident in nursing homes where they could not afford to lose a staff member to be away on training.
This indicates the Government should have a system of providing a suitable pool of staff which business people can draw on to replace staff when a member is away being trained. TORGAS was a founder on these problems and supplied apprentices to firms when a workman was approved to be away for weeks on training.
The main problem is school leavers will not accept a very small apprentice wage while their mates could be on a job pulling in a much larger pay packet. They also want a car as soon as they are of age and will not accept a pushbike to travel to work.
It is a case of using either the TORGAS example or funding of TAFE. However we need to do something as types of jobs will change. GARTH HARRIGAN, Aitkenvale.