APPLICATION FOR NEW AWARD

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22319, 5 February 1938, Page 13

APPLICATION FOR NEW AWARD

+ — CLAIMS OF DRIVERS’ UNION MANY INDUSTRIES AFFECTED Twenty-six days’ holiday each year on full pay—l2 statutory holidays and 14 consecutive working days-*-and wages ranging up to £6 10s a week are the chief claims in an application for a new award by the New Zealand Federated Drivers’ and Related Trades’ Industrial Association of Workers. The dispute, which affects many industries—including contractors, bakers, carriers, merchants, etc. — will be heard in Conciliation Council in Wellington next Tuesday. It is proposed that the award should operate throughout the whole of the Dominion, and the union asks that its term should be one year. The minimum wage claimed for drivers is £5 5s a week; but this is intended to apply onl' to men driving and attending one horse and, all motorvehicles under two tons. The rate claimed for drivers employed by bakers, laundrymen. and dry cleaners is £5 15s, and for men driving horse and motor-vehicles employed by oil companics or their distributing agents the rate is £6 a week. .For men driving tractors, road rollers, graders, mechanical shovels, and excavators on construction or maintenance work, the minimum rate claimed is £6. The union claims that all the time a driver is in charge of his employer’s vehicle or property shall count as time worked, and that where motor-vehicles are not equipped with self-starters drivers should be paid 10s a week extra. Other claims in the union’s application are that youths less than 20 years of age should not be required to handle or carry parcels weighing more than 701 b. a maximum which is raised to 1001 b for youths 21 years of age. No worker shall be required to carry sacks of coal exceeding 1401 b., Provision is also made for the carriage of uncoffined corpses, in which case it is claimed that drivers should receive an additional 10s. It is also asked that drivers engaged in carting fish, either loose or in crates, should receive Is 6d a day extra, and drivers carting offal or -e-

fuse from abattoirs or freezing works an additional 2s 6d a day; all such workers to be supplied with aprons, overalls, and clogs while thus engaged, and to be allowed 30 minutes to change or wash at the completion of