Apprenticeship

An Enquirey into its Adequacy under Modern Conditions

Kate Liepmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415176736
• eBook ISBN: 9781136252051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

This is Volume I of eighteen in a series on the Sociology of Work and Organisation. First published in 1960, this is a study following the appointment Carr Committee, in 1956, of the and in the interest aroused by the Committee's Report Training for Skill-Recruitment and Training of young Workers in Industry (1958). The Carr Report and the discussion centred on it not only show the importance of the subject but also indicate the need for independent and detailed research in this field. Because certain features of apprenticeship are changing continuously and rapidly, it is inevitable that in a study of this kind some of the facts should be out of date by the time of publication.

PART I

BACKGROUND AND FRAMEWORK OF THE APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM

II

THE BACKGROUND

ALTHOUGH apprenticeship today is still ‘voluntary’ in the sense of not being decreed by statute, its voluntary character is qualified by a number of more or less official instruments and provisions which form the framework of apprenticeship, and also by powerful forces which operate in the background. The two main instruments concerned with apprenticeship are the National Schemes for apprenticeship, which are agreed by the two sides of the various industries, and the individual indentures. But the organisation of apprenticeship can be discerned from these documents only in part. The system is largely determined by uncodified ancient tradition on the one hand, and on the other hand by non-standardized agreements, unpublished customs, tacit ‘understandings’ and unrevealed procedures which have been developed during the past century.

Ancient tradition is so strong that no clear definition, distinguishing apprenticeship from other forms of learnership, has been deemed necessary, and that no deed of indenture is required for apprenticeship to be recognised as such by the Government, by employers and by trade unions.

If unwritten tradition takes the place of explicit regulation in some apprenticeship matters, in others the procedure has remained uncodified because it is a live issue between employers and trade unions. Questions related with apprenticeship are interwoven in the fabric of industrial relations, and in the continual contest for control of entry into skilled occupations neither side of industry likes to commit itself or to reveal its tactics.

In view of this situation, the following section is concerned with apprenticeship as a social institution. Thereafter we consider in which ways the background of the apprenticeship system has altered consequent on two general developments of great moment: accelerated technological evolution, and changes in the country's educational system since the last war.

APPRENTICESHIP AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION

‘Apprenticeship is the contractual relationship between an employer and a worker under which the employer is obliged to teach the worker … and … the worker is to serve the employer … on stated terms’.¹ Apprenticeship is thus a matter between two parties and, on the face of it, consists of two elements, the reciprocal obligations between the employer and his apprentice. The apprenticeship system, however, has a third element, the function of regulating entry into the skilled occupations; and it involves trade unions as a third party. Hence, also, individual apprenticeship contains a third element, namely the promise of admission to a protected trade.

The first two elements are intrinsic features of the period of apprenticehood (the older word seems more meaningful here); the third, by contrast, arises from post-apprenticehood considerations concerning the craftsman's competitive position in the labour market. Apprenticeship is thus not merely the future craftsman's training for which he pays by bound service; it is also used as a means for other ends, pertaining to the sphere of industrial relations in general.

The interviews for the present enquiry have been focused on the years of apprenticehood and on the problems arising from the conflict of interests of the apprentice and his employer during this period. The regulation of entry into the skilled occupations has been studied by inference rather than in detail, for several reasons: the overt limitation of apprentices is diminishing; the pervasiveness of the indirect interrelations between apprenticeship and restrictive practices was fully realised only in the course of the enquiry; cautious questions on this subject which were subsequently put to interviewees met with reticent or evasive answers from both sides of industry and threatened to block the communication which has been readily forthcoming on other aspects of apprenticeship conditions. Glimpses of the interconnection between apprenticeship and restrictive practices were however obtained and, together with the study of older literature,¹ helped to clarify certain baffling features of the apprenticeship system. The very vagueness of one or two recent agreements confirmed these findings.

Until recently three assumptions, whose general validity was taken for granted, underlay the discussion of the regulation of entry into skilled occupations. First, ‘regulation’ meant the prevention of excess only, not of deficiency of supply of labour; second, the yardstick by which to measure an overstocking of a trade was the employers' demand; third, it was assumed that ‘in the main, the employers, desiring a plentiful labour supply, fix the proportion of apprentices to journeymen high’.²

Today, the adequacy of all three assumptions has come under fire, though not all with equal justification.

1. Some people fear that industry will be starved of skilled labour because the number of apprentices under training falls short of replacing the present generation of craftsmen. However, as will be shown later, profound changes in industrial methods considerably reduce the strength of this argument.

2. The education and training of each child in accordance with his inclination and ability is now an accepted aim of public policy; thereby a new conception of the proper number to be trained for skilled occupations has come into being, viz. the number of boys wanting, and in the opinion of the Y.E.Os suitable for, an apprenticeship. Even before the imminent bulge of school leavers, the number of applicants for apprenticeship largely exceeds the number of openings offered by firms. The Carr Committee³ was set up to deal with the problem of the bulge, and in 1958 the Industrial Training Council was established.

3. Firms' demand for craft apprentices is checked by several factors; (a) many of the traditional crafts have become deskilled; (b) various jobs which used to be the prerogative of craftsmen can now be given to semi-skilled operatives; (c) apprenticeship is used by trade unions as the basis of demarcation and other restrictive practices. While all three items are treated in some detail in later chapters, item (c) must be briefly considered here, because the organisation and the operation of the apprenticeship system are not intelligible unless the connection between apprenticeship and the vested interests of craftsmen is understood.

The craftsmen's claim to their traditional privileges in the labour market—differential wages and the exclusive right to certain jobs—rests on their having undergone the ‘educational servitude’ of apprenticeship. Of the two factors, the craftsmen's superiority of education, i.e. of training, has been weakened because of the de-skilling of many old crafts. The other factor, bound service at low wages over a prolonged period, has therefore come to be the paramount argument in the craftsmen's case. It is this consideration, rather than concern with the apprentice's training and well-being during his years of service, which explains the attitude of craft unions and of craft sections in unions such as the A.E.U. to the stipulations and customs which govern apprenticeship conditions.

In a later chapter we shall try to account for the paradox that apprenticeship-based restrictionism is so strong, if largely covert, today, in spite of the decline of craft unionism. But it seems suitable here to deal shortly with the background of trade-union policies of regulating the entry into skilled occupations.

Regulation of entry into occupations has been a prominent feature of the apprenticeship system since medieval times. It was therefore an old policy which trade unions took over after apprenticeship had ceased to be compulsory in 1814. Skilled workers were the first to be organised; and, in the era of free competition, the craftsmen's struggle for better conditions for themselves alone was in tune with the zeitgeist. Apprenticeship was the distinguishing characteristic of craftsmen and lent itself to being used for limiting entry into their trades.

Trade-union policy has been informed, said S. and B. Webb,¹ by three divergent doctrines, the doctrine of vested interests, the doctrine of supply and demand, and the doctrine of a living wage. On the whole, they considered, trade unionism has moved away from sectionalism towards collectivism; but they saw the older doctrines still prevailing in some quarters and manifesting themselves in certain trade-union regulations.

By now, the aims of the doctrine of a living wage have been largely achieved, but this collectivist doctrine has not ousted the sectional ones. The two older doctrines are still influential, not least in trade-union policy regarding apprenticeship.

It is the doctrine of vested interests which ‘gives the bitterness to demarcation disputes and lies at the back of all the regulations dealing with the ‘right to a trade’. It does more than anything else to keep alive … the practice of a lengthened period of apprenticeship …’ These words, written over half-a-century ago, could not be bettered to describe conditions today.

The doctrine of supply and demand is connected with the fact that ‘wisely or unwisely, the Trade Unions have tacitly accepted the position that the capitalist can only be expected to find them wages so long as he can find them work’.² The engagement of workers is included when the unions recognise ‘the right of management to manage’. To further their interests, craft unions resorted therefore to limiting the entry into their trade. Making the supply of craftsmen scarce is a measure to protect them against redundancy; besides, scarcity of craftsmen strengthens their power to obtain monopolistic wages. Limitation of apprentices also has the purpose of checking the substitution of cheaper labour for the craftsman's labour.

Limitation of apprentices is the most obvious form of regulating entry into a skilled trade, but it is of no avail if apprenticeship is not the only gate of entry; hence the craftsmen's perennial fight against the influx of ‘illegal men’ into their trade. The latter are of two kinds: craftsmen of other trades and non-apprenticed operatives. The craftsmen's defence against the first of these challengers of their exclusive right to the trade is demarcation. Measures against the second are opposition to, or control of, dilution; the rules and practices aimed at controlling dilution are various and varying, and not fully disclosed.

To say that the trade unions' recourse to limiting the entry into skilled occupations was in tune with the conditions and the spirit of the time in the 19th century does not mean that such a policy is sound or justifiable in the different social, economic and technical circumstances of today. This topic will be taken up in a later chapter.

The institution of apprenticeship means different things to different bodies. For trade unions, we have just seen, the main purpose of apprenticeship is the regulation of entry into occupations: it is an issue of critical importance in the sphere of industrial relations.

What matters to the employer of apprentices is to strike a nice balance between training to the standard required for the apprentices' jobs and using the apprentices' services for productive work.

The Ministry of Labour sees in apprenticeship solely a method and opportunity of training. The foremost objects of the Ministry's policy have been, on the one hand, an increase in the number of apprenticeship openings and the improvement of apprentice training, in particular the day release of all apprentices for the attendance at technical courses; and on the other hand, the introduction of some measure of industrial training for all young workers. The aims of the Ministry are indeed praiseworthy. But, if our thesis is correct, the Ministry's policy of resorting to apprenticeship for the training for industry has little chance of success, for it leaves out of account the powerful sectional interests in ap...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Preface
• I Introduction
• Part I Background And Framework Of The Apprenticeship System
• Part II. The System In Operation
• Index