UNDER AWARD RATES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 173, 24 July 1930, Page 9

UNDER AWARD RATES.

ILLEGAL, AGREEMENT.

BOY AHD EMPLOYERS

PROSECUTIONS AT PUKEKOHE

An offence, which the magistrate described as serious, inasmuch as an effort had been made: to defeat the conditions of an award made to protect labour, resulted in Beatty and Marshall, butcheis, of Pukekoh'e, being fined £7 and costs in the Magistrate's Court at Pukekohe yesterday. An employee of Beatty and Marshall, named John Smith, M r as fined £2. and costs for receiving less than award wages. Beatty and Marshall pleaded guilty to charges of making a 'false entry in a wages book and failing to pay the award rate of wages. Smith also pleaded guilty. Mr. J. Hollows, inspector of awards, said Smith was employed from February, 1927, and received £2 10/ a week. His wage was raised to £3 and then to £3 10/. The award rate of pay for a general butcher's hand was £4 .16/ a week —the lowest. ' He understood Smith did most of the slaughtering and if so, he was entitled to £5 5/. When he visited the firm's shop and asked for the wages and time book, he was told it was at the farm, but a promise was made that it would be posted. It arrived a week later, when it was found that £4 10/ had been entered in the wages book and signed for by Smith. Later, as a compromise, the firm had paid Smith £80, arrears of wages. "Only Job He Could Get." Mr. A. Fotheringham asked that Smith be treated with leniency. The reason he worked for lower than award rates was that he wanted work to assist in maintaining his widowed mother. He either had to work for less | than award wages, 01' let his mother starve. Mr. E. G. Foster said .when the boy's father died, the mother approached Mr. Beatty, seeking employment for her son. The boy was not a butcher, and Beatty said it was impossible to employ him at the award rates of pay. The boy agreed to start at £2 10/, which amount was increased."to £3 10/ as he became more useful. 111 addition he received free meals,: anil the full use of horses and implements from Beatty's

farm, and time off to do work on his mother's 10-acre farmlet, 011 which-she milked 12 cows. It was a gentleman's agreement, yet lie claimed back wages, and received £80, more than' he was entitled to under the Act. Magistrate's Comment. Mr. P. H. Levien, S.M.j said the case could not- be looked upon lightly. In view of the peculiar circumstances, the youth and the firm could have applied to the Department for permission to .receive and to pay lower wages, and perhaps the Department would have agreed. Another butcher, N. L. Brown, Pukekohe, was fined £2 10/ and costs for failing to keep a wages and overtime book, and failing to pay the award rate of wages to an employee. The inspector stated that defendant had, for three or four months, employed a 17-year-okl lad for three or four hours a day and paid him 17/G a week.

Counsel said that the defendant had given the lad employment to assist his family. The boy was now out of employment, simply because defendant could not afford to pay him the award wages. '