SHOP GIRLS' DRESSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 210, 5 September 1930, Page 9

SHOP GIRLS' DRESSES.

BLACK MOST FAVOURED.

PROVIDED FOR IN THE AWARD.

ATTITUDE OF CITY FIRMS,

In view of the fact that the Labour Department took action against a drapery' company in Wellington to recover .£lO as a penalty because it was alleged that the management had required its female .employees to dress in coloured garments'in place of the black dresses and aprons usually worn and had failed to provide such free of cost to the employees, a "Star" reporter made inquiries in Auckland this morning. In the Wellington case it was proved that the management had not required the assistants to dress in a colour scheme, and in dismissing the information the magistrate said the action should mot have been brought, and to mark his disapproval of the proceedings he allowed £1 1/ costs against the Labour Department. "The Dominion retail shop assistants award is very plain on the point," said the secretary of a well-known Queen Street establishment this morning. "Clause 21 specifically states, 'In any establishment where an employer requires any employee to dress in any particular style or colour other than the ordinary black dress and aprons usually worn- by female shop assistants, such garment not being the employee's outdoor wearingVgarment, then such employer shall supply such garment to suit such employee free.' You could not get anything plainer than that, could you? With regard to our females' dresses it has been the custom to allow them to have the black materials at cost price, and only the actual cqst 6i- making is charged them. If we wished to dress our girls ,in colours then we would have to pay for the material and the making. That is fully realised by the firm, but there is nothing to prevent the girls dressing in colours if the. management have no objection. It is thought, however, that black is the most suitable wearing apparel for shop assistants employed in drapery and other establishments. ;

Pay for Colour Schemes. When another firm was approached, the manager remarked that the supplying of- black garments free to the whole of the shop assistants would be out of all reason. "For instance," he said, "take the case of a girl who stayed with us only a week or .maybe a month. She would be able to walk out with the dress and all. No, it would not be fair, especially where there were many changes, of staff. Where there are hundreds of assistants employed, if we had to supply their uniforms free it would run into considerable cost. It is realised, however, that if colours are required to be worn in various departments, then the firm would have to pay for the dressing."

Uniforms in Offices. Girls and women employed in offices are not affected by the award; but it has become the.practice in many large offices em pi oying ;i .a large number of girls, to put them in a suit of uniform. In the majority of cases the girls do not object—in fact, they prefer the custom, because it saves their own clothes. In practically all large Government Departments, such as the Railway Department, the girl typiets are clothed in a neat blue overall with the monogram N.Z.E. neatly worked on the pocket. So popular has it become that recently the gills employed in a particularly large city office adopted a similar uniform on. their own account. Since then, many of the female employees in other city offices ha ve followed suit. •