CONCILIATION COUNCIL

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21992, 16 January 1937, Page 8

CONCILIATION COUNCIL

CONCRETE WORKERS'

DISPUTE

NO FINAL AGREEMENT MADE

Agreement on all but one section of the schedule was reached yesterday in Conciliation Council between the Canterbury Builders' and General Labourers' and Related Workers' Industrial Union of Workers and the Hume Pipe Company (Aust.), Ltd., and others, in the Canterbury concrete workers*' dispute. The employees' assessors were Miss M B. Howard and Messrs C. Auton and W Hickey, and those for the employers' Messrs E. A. Ockenden, H. J. McGavick. O. H. Oakley, and. D. 1. Macdonald. The main difficulty m conciliation was the section dealing with wages. The employers' representatives first mode an increased offer of 2s 2d an hour for concrete tile moulders, and 2s Ud for all other tile, concrete, and pumice workers. This was not acceptable to the employees' assessors, and the employers' assessors then made a final offer of 2s 3d and 2s 2d respectively for these classes of workers. In both of these offers two extra holidays were included—Show Day and January 2. .. Miss Howard asked for an adjournment so that the position could be put before the men concerned. No official adjournment was made, and the matter now rests, until the employees decide whether the offer shall be accepted or not. The section on hours of work agreed to reads:— "(a) Except as provided in clause ;b) hereof, the ordinary hours of work shall not exceed 40 a week, to be worked between the hours of 7.30 a.m. and 5 p.m. on the first five days of the week, with an hour for lunch.

"(b) In the event of. necessitous work, men may be employed for not more than four hours, between 7.30 a.m. and 12 noon, on Saturday, provided that not more than 40 hours are worked in one week. "(c) The meal interval may be reduced by mutual consent of the employer and the workers at any plant, and further, with the consent of the men concerned, five hours may be worked without an interval for a meal."

The minimum rate of payment of youths for their first six months was agreed upon as follows: 16 to 17 years of age, £1 per week; 17 to 18, £1 10s; 18 to 19, £1 15s; 19 to 20, £2 ss; 20 to 21, £3. It was also decided that youths might be employed in the proportion of not more than one to each three or fraction of each three fullypaid workers, with a variation allowed in special circumstances.