SHEARERS' WAGES.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17808, 6 July 1923, Page 11

SHEARERS' WAGES.

DISPUTE BEFORE COURT. (PRESS ASSOCIATION- TZLEOBAU.) WELLINGTON, July 5. The hearing of the shearers' dispute as it applied to the Wellington district was commenced in the Arbitration Court to-day. The main questions in dispute were the hours of work and" rates of pay, a forty four-hour week and payment at the rate of £1 10s a hundred, with rations, and shears, being asked for. The employers offered the old awa-rd as a counter proposal. A largo number of clauses were announced as having been settled. An important section of the demands remaining in dispute was one having as its object the covering of shearing machine experts employed at tho sheds. Mr Grayndler, for the employees, urid that no evidence would be called in Wellington, but evidence would be called at some other districts. One thing objected to was the fixing of the wage on a Wellington basis. Some districts considered that they sh6uld get more. Mr Justice Frazer: That is only looking at it one way. Mr Grayndler said that personally he would have preferred a Dominion award. Mr W. H. Nicholson said that the employers would not have agreed to the counter proposals had they known that they were not to be for a Dominion award. Mr Justice Frazer said that in the meantime they would treat the demands purely, as in the case of disputes, and Mr Grayndler would have the right to ask, at whatever stage he thought fit, that the demands should be consolidated, and the dispute continued on Dominion lines. This might be after, say, three or four districts had been heard. This course was accepted on the understanding that' Mr Nicholson or Mr Prime would have the right to call what evidence they might consider fit from districts not dealt with.