INTERPRETATION OF FACTORIES ACT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22429, 16 June 1938, Page 7

INTERPRETATION OF FACTORIES ACT

DECISION RESERVED BY FULL COURT

(PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.) WELLINGTON. June 15. The Full Court this afternoon resumed the hearing of the appeal of Percy Smith, heard in part on Monday. Smith was charged at New Plymouth in February last that, being the manager of the Waitoitoi Dairy Company’s factory, he allowed a worker named Sadler to be employed between August 'll and September 22, 1937, for seven days each week, contrary to section 4 of the Factories Amendment Act, 1936, That section provides that no worker be employed for seven days a week in a dairy factory, but exempts any dairy factory or creamery where not more than two workers are regularly employed. Mr C. H. Taylor, of the Crown Law Office, appearing for the respondent. Inspector Wilson, contended that a “working manager” must be included as a worker for the purpose of ascertaining whether more than two workers were employed in any particular factory. The meaning of the term “worker” in section 4 of the Factories Amendment Act, 1936, could be ascertained by referring to the definition of a worker in the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, where the definition was wide enough to include a working manager. On the meaning of the term “regularly” in the section, he submitted that the Court would take the general practice of the factory over a period of a year and not over the shorter periods contended for by Mr Stevenson, for the appellant. The Court reserved its decision,'