WAGES RATES FOR TINSMITHS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21701, 7 February 1936, Page 7

WAGES RATES FOR TINSMITHS

DECISION RESERVED

ARBITRATION COURT HEARING

Decision was reserved by his Honour Mr Justice Page in the Arbitration Court yesterday in the Canterbury tinsmiths' and sheet metal-workers' dispute. Wages and overtime clauses were discussed yesterday, and in announcing that decision was reserved, Mr Justice Page stated that an inspection would be made of a tinsmith's establishment. With Mr Justice Page were Messrs W. Cecil Prime (employers' representative) and A. L. Monteith (employees' representative). Mr G. T. Thurston, appearing for the union, said that the wages and overtime clauses were the only ones which the employers had been agreeable to submit to the court, for there were other matters, particularly concerning boys and youths, the conditions of their work, and their wages, which the assessors have agreed to, which could not have been agreed to in circumstances other than those prevailing at the present time, and he asked that, if it was competent for him to suggest it, such be recorded in the court's memorandum of the award. Mr Thurston also said that the union had been cited by the employers in February, 1933, when the wage was 2s 3d an hour, less 10 per cent., and was then offered Is 10£ dan hour. The union declined to accept, the award collapsed, and since that time, he claimed, employers had paid just what they chose to pay. Ostensibly they were abiding by an agreement amongst themselves to pay Is IOJd an hour. The union was asking for its original award rate of 2s 3d an hour.

Mr D. I. Macdonald, for the employers, referred to the extent of competition both from outside the country and from other parts of the Dominion, which prevented wages above those being offered from being paid. He said that Mr Thurston's statements were unsupported by evidence, and he submitted that Mr Thurston had attempted to prejudice the court. Evidence for the employers was given by James Mercer, of Mercer's, Ltd., who said that when there was no award employers had endeavoured to operate on an agreement to pay skilled men Is IOJd an hour. In some cases men had been paid on a higher scale, and if others were paid below that it was because they were kept on when possibly there was not the work to do. The court then reserved its decision, and later in the afternoon inspected a city tinsmith's establishment.