TANNERS' HOURS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23923, 25 March 1941, Page 9

TANNERS' HOURS

Sir, —In Thursday's Hkhai.d voii report the Leader of the Opposition as .saying lie knows of no case where workers privately employed had been allowed to work overtime at ordinary rales of pay. Taken in its context this of course was referring to the 10-hour week. Now there arc separate unions consisting of hundreds of men associated with the tannery trade who arc. and have been, working a -1-1-hour week at ordinary rates of pay for some time past. That is not all. Shifts of eight hours from mid-dav until eight at night are worked in conjunction with the ordinary hours to enable extra machine work to be done, thus again avoiding extra pay. There are people who would say the tannery unions are disunited, conserjuently we are exploited and that even the Labour Party takes very little interest in tis. This may be true, but yon can't deny we are doing our bit. ' " Skuvick.

[An extension of the weekly hours of work to 44 in the tanning Industry was made under a labour legislation suspension order by the Minister of Labour, the Hon. P. C. Webb, on August 7, 1940. The order suspended the existing award in so far as it operated to prevent an additional tour hours being worked at ordinary rates of pay. It was then provided that the additional hours should be worked on five or five and a-half days of the week by agreement between the employers and the workers' union, and that youths employed during the additional hours should be paid for the time worked at ordinary rates in addition to their weekly wajje. The reason for the extension of hours was that more leather was required by the footwear industry because of munition contracts. —Editor, Herald.]