Informal training for work

The main characteristic of the work done by the majority of workers in whom I am interested is that they lack skills and have to depend on little more than their own physical strength. Learning by doing is common practice from early age onwards. This type of training is standardized particularly in the case of those who are taken on for an indefinite period but who at the start lack the necessary knowledge that will help them in due course to become experienced workers. One of the workers already employed – perhaps the same one who mediated in finding employment – will then show the newcomer the tricks of the trade.

Apprenticeship in the diamond industry is undoubtedly the longest, i.e. six months, but still too short to teach the newcomer how to use the lathe and all stages of diamond cutting. Old hands at work told me with pride that their generation needed two years in which to become fully skilled. It will be clear that only young males who belonged to a household already firmly above the poverty line went for that training. For the landless it would have been impossible to carry the subsistence burden of adults or adolescents who, instead of contributing to family income, invested in their own future. Nowadays, instruction is restricted to a single part of the cutting process.