Abstract
The survival of apprenticeship in modern Australian industry represents a marked contrast to the institution's virtual disappearance in many other industrial capi talist countries. This article considers one specific historical conjuncture that appears to have figured decisively in the institution's survival in New South Wales, namely, the formative period of state industrial regulation and award making between 1902 and 1914. At the close of the nineteenth century, the custom of formal or indentured apprenticeship had virtually ceased to exist in New South Wales, yet by 1914 it had become compulsory for male juniors in virtually every recognized trade in the state. Drawing on evidence from three key male-dominated trades (carpentry andjoinery, type-composing and engineering), this article pro vides a multifaceted explanation for this dramatic revival. It argues the explana tory inadequacy of each of three main hypotheses on the survival of apprenticeship posited in the existing literature, namely the technicist/onskilling, the deskilling and the social constructionist/reskilling theses. In particular, it challenges the feminist-social constructionist contention that apprenticeship survived as a form of ritual servitude, as an exclusionary device imposed unilaterally on unwilling employers by craft unions and 'captive' industrial tribunals. The case study evidence indicates that the revival owed far less to arbitral imposition than to bilateral negotiation and agreement between unions and organized employers. In this sense, the institution's survival is attributable, in large part, to employers' ongoing need for genuine skill. The main focus of employer resistance was not to the compulsory apprenticeship, but to union attempts to limit apprentice employ ment in those areas of craft production where deskilling had occurred or was occurring. It is only there that compulsory apprenticeship can be said to have amounted to either a union-imposed form of ritual servitude or an employer device for junior labour exploitation.