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Many of the larger factories have their own
training departments. In addition, to a high degree of skill is being
given in the Ministry of Labour Training Centres, supplemented by
training at a large number of Technical Colleges, and similar
institutions. Youths below military age, men above it, men in unfit
categories and women in certain classes are all accepted for training
that may last, according to the skill required, from a few weeks to
several months. Employed men and women already experienced in
engineering, whose skill it is necessary to increase, are trained free
of charge, their employers continuing to pay them wages. Sometimes they
undertake training in order to transfer to a better job, and then are
paid wages by the Ministry during the period of tuition.
There are also part-time courses and lectures on
foremanship and supervision in various industrial centres for both men
and women, and workers have shown astonishing willingness to attend
these courses at the end of hard working days in the factories. Also,
full-time courses of several weeks have been organized for canteen cooks
and canteen manageresses. And though we may be chiefly employed in
making instruments of destruction, it can be said without hesitation
that we are a far highly skilled people than we were four years ago.
Men and women of all grades of society and of
various nationalities have passed through the Government Training
Centres.
A girl of 16 entered to be trained on capstan lathe
work. She proved adaptable, and was trained not only in operating but in
setting. The employment following her training was in an engineering
work also undertaking the manufacture of guns. She was amongst the first
women employed in these works, and so blazed a trail there for the
further employment of women.
Two carpenters took up the training together as
centre lathe turners, and their previous experience stood them in good
stead. They were placed with a firm doing a highly specialised type of
work, including secret aircraft equipment. Both were so successful that
they have promoted to works foreman and tool-room foreman respectively.
A man discharged from the forces on the account of
a foot injury, who was in peace-time a dairymen, has trained in electric
welding, which in normal times is regarded as a trade requiring physical
fitness. He was placed at work on all-welded tanks.
A barman, rejected for the Forces, decided to go
into munitions. As a boy he had worked in various engineering shops, and
had attended evening classes in engineering subjects. At the Training
Centre he was passed to inspection work after a few weeks’ experience
in handling bench tools. He is now employed by a firm engaged in making
fine gauges in connection with which he is handling some of the finest
testing apparatus and machines.
Among the men and women from business and
professions who Registration was the first step in sorting out the
nation’s manpower. There were many jobs in the Army. Which would he do
best
. The call-up for women, as for men, ensures that national service works
out fairly for every one and that the nation’s full power goes into
the war. Part-time works in civil Defence eases the strain on manpower.
Have gone through the centres are a colonel, aged
56, who owns an estate in Yorkshire, but is now chief storekeeper in an
aircraft factory; a professional golfer who is on bench fitting; an
opera singer who is an inspector and viewer; a solicitor who is a
draughtsman; a missionary who is a tool-maker; and a school master and a
librarian who are on instrument making.
Friendly aliens who have taken the training course
include a Czech who arrived in this country with his wife in 1939. He
had been an oil merchant and the proprietor of a chemical company. He
and his wife entered the Training centre together, worked together in
the same section, and were placed together in the manufacture of
Spitfires, to their intense satisfaction. There was also a Polish
sculptor who is now on instrument-making in a factory near London; an
Austrian who was a well-known journalist and now is a machine operator;
a German social worker is an inspector, while another of his countrymen
– a former lawyer and a high court judge – is working as a miller;
and a Dutch boy is welding tank parts.
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