KNEW IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT ”

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21894, 22 September 1936, Page 10

KNEW IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT ”

COMPLETE RESTORATION OF WAGES MR ARMSTRONGS ADMISSION An admission that there were bound to be difficulties in the application of the “blanket clause” of the Finance Act, providing for the restoration of wages to the 1931 level in all cases, whether workers are covered by awards or not, was made by the Minister for Employment (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong) yesterday. Mr Armstrong was asked to comment on reports that certain employers outside the scope of awards do not consider themselves legally bound to ipake the restoration. “Where it can be applied, it will be,” said the Minister. He added that it was usually easy to ascertain what wages were paid in 1931 for particular classes of work, as the employers in most cases kept records. “We knew the blanket clause would be pretty difficult to apply,” he conceded. Mr Armstrong explained that in individual cases, where a worker found that he was being paid less than, in 1931, he could state his case to the Labour Department, and the Arbitration Court could make the adjustment. When the difficulty of classifying work according to the wages paid three years ago was mentioned to him, he repeated that the Government had expected difficulty.