WAGE INCREASE.
PUBLIC WORKS MEN.
liD AN HOUR MORE.
THREEPENCE IN SOME CASES.
CONFERENCE THIS WEEK.
All men employed on public works are to receive a« general increase in wages of lid »ji hour, while in addition, married men who have to accept accommodation for single men will receive a further allowance of lid.
This increase, according to the Hon. F. L. Lark, M.L.C., secretary of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Workers' Lnion, has been approved by Cabinet, and he is going to Wellington to-morrow night in connection with the finalising of details.
The central executive of the union, he said tojday, had been making representations to the Government for the past five months in an effort to secure an increase, but negotiations had been delayed through a number of causes, among which were the absence in England of the Minister of Finance, the Hon. W. Nash, and the,recJnt illness of the Prime Minister, the Right Hon. M. J. Savage.
A conference was to be held on Friday at the offices in Wellington of the Public Works Department, where final details would be settled. The conference would be attended by Public Works officials and by the delegates appointed by the union executive to make representations in the first place.
A number of machinery clauses had to be fixed, Mr. Lark said, while the date from which the increase would operate was another matter to be settled.
Now that the increase had Cabinet sanction he was confident that the wages increase would be extended to m«n on road maintenance and to State forestry and land development workers. On the basis of the 40-hour week, says the "Standard," the new rates represent an advance of 5/ weekly to all men and a special advance of 10/ weekly to married men who are separated from their families.
The cost to the country each year will be heavy. It is not possible to ascertain exactly the number of married men and single men on Public Works in the Dominion, but the totals approximately are 2000 and 22,000 res|iectively. On that basis the annual additional wages charge will be £338,000.
In a statement in Wellington to-day the Minister of Finance, Mr. Nash, said the increases would make the wages of the men comparable with those prevailing under awards in other industries. They would operate, he added, from October 1. *•
The increase will bring the minimum wage on Public Works up to £4 5/ a week.
WAGE INCREASE.
Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 246, 18 October 1939, Page 8
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