SUNDAY PAY ISSUE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 217, 13 September 1944, Page 3

SUNDAY PAY ISSUE

HARBOUR BOARD'S CASE ALLEGED DEFIANCE OP LAW (P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Tuesday. "As I said in another Court previously, these proceedings represent a sorry spectacle of a local body continuing to defy the law," said Mr. M. J. Gresson, counsel for the New Zealand Hai-bour Board's Employees' Union, in the Arbitration Court, when an appeal was heard from the decision of Mr. F. F. Reid, S.M., on August 6 last year, awarding a penalty of £25 on each of two charges against the Lyttelton Harbour Board for breaches of the 1941 award in not paying C. Welch, boatman, the wage rate of the award. Mr. J. F. B. Stevenson, of Wellington, represented the Lyttelton Harbour Board, and the question for the Court, which was presided over by Mr. Justice Tyndall, was whether Mr. Reid's decision was right in law. Until the passing of an amendment to the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act last year, said Mr. Stevenson, a worker always had to sue in civil Courts for wages claimed by him. The amendment gave him the right to sue for wages in the Court of Arbitration in the same manner as in a breach of the award. If the worker sued in a civil Court there was the right of appeal. However, it still left civil proceedings open if the worker cared to take them. Mr. Stevenson said that harbour boards, as custodians of public funds, contended that they were not liable for the large claims made upon them by using their workers for work done on Sundays and holidays when such work was done as part of the workers' ordinary shift or of their working week. They desired the question of their liability to be decided by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. An originating summons had been lodged in the Supreme Court asking that Court to determine what wages should be paid to Welch. He therefore asked the Arbitration Court to take that into consideration when making its decision. Mr. Gresson said the harbour board were spending public money and the course they were following at the present time was a disastrous one. To continue flouting the law was the worst example they covdd set for other employees. "Mr. Stevenson has mentioned that an originating summons has been lodged in the Supreme Court. That will be the final obstruction and flouting of the law by the harbour boards." Decision was reserved.