CLAIM AGAINST IMMIGRANT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26944, 21 January 1953, Page 5

CLAIM AGAINST IMMIGRANT

BREACH OF CONTRACT OF EMPLOYMENT

JUDGMENT GIVEN FOR GOVERNMENT

A claim that the New Zealand Government had not honoured its agreement about the type of employment she would be given in New Zealand was made by Mrs Peggy Pickdtt, aged 23, an English assisted immigrant, in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday before Mr F. F. Reid, S.M. The claim was made in answer to a claim by the Attorney-General for £64, the amount of her passage from England to New Zealand. x

Mr N. H. Buchanan appeared for Mrs Pickett and Mr P. T. Mahon for the Attorney-General. Judgment for the plaintiff for the full amount claimed was given by the Magistrate. Mrs Pickett had entered into a written agreement with the New Zealand Government on* September 14, 1950, that, for the payment of her passage she would remain in the employment to which she was directed by the Government for a period of two years, said Mr Mahon. She also agreed to refund the amount of her fare if she did not comply with the terms of the agreement. The fare was paid in December, 1950, and Mrs Pickett arrived in New Zealand on January 24, 1951, said Mr Mahon. She then confirmed that the advance had been made for her passage. On the same date she had been directed to employment in the Social Security Department in Wellington as an operator of a power Samas machine, an intricate electrical accounting and recording machine. She commenced work on January 25. On March 1 she left her position at the Social Security Department without the permission of the Government and from that time she had been engaged in employment to which she had not been allocated by the Government, said Mr Mahon. She had refused to enter any employment offered by the Government. On March 23 and several times later the Government had demanded that the money advanced for her passage be refunded but she had refused to pay it. During the five weeks she had worked at the Social Security Department Mrs Pickett made repeated attempts to transfer to Christchurch, but she was told the machines were used in Wellington. She then left and came to Christchurch where she was traced to a bank by the immigration authorities, said Mr Mahon. The Defence The defendant, in evidence, said that when she started in the Social Security Department she had been given work on the machine which punched cards for the power Samas tabulating machine. This was not a skilled job. She had spent about a year in the maker’s factory training on the machines. The machines in the department were of the type she could use. “I went to the supervisor of my section and she said she would inquire about my going on to the tabulating machines,” said the defendant. “I did not hear any more about it. In England a trained operator would not be put on to punching the cards at any stage.” Mrs Pickett said she went to the Immigration Department, but they were not able to help her. She was not entirely happy at the hostel at Seatoun’ in which she lived because it was too far away and the long journey upset her. She tried to get board in the city, but she was unsuccessful. “I was interviewed by an official of the Immigration Department in Christchurch, but he flatly refused to listen to me,” she said. . “I would not have been interested in the immigration scheme if the position for power Samas operators had not been mentioned in the advertisement. I would have been in a better position in England.” To Mr Mahon she said that the idea of emigrating to New Zealand had appealed to her because of the positions available for operators. She would not have come if sne had been offered employment as an operator of the punching machine. “I was not told what the wages for an operator would be in New Zealand, but I understood that wages and conditions were better than m England,” she said. She was paid at the rate for an operator.

“I am satisfied that the real reason for the defendant’s decision to move to Christchurch was not primarily because she was not employed on a certain type of machine, but because she was not happy in Wellington and wanted to come to Christchurch,” said the Magistrate in giving his decision. “Those reasons are not • sufficient for her to break her employment.” The contract went no further than to say that she was a qualified operator and that she was qualified to engage in employment as such an operator, the Magistrate said. “But it cannot mean that the Government would employ her exclusively on that type of work.” The work she did in Wellington was part of the system of the machines. If .she had been employed as a typist at a typist’s wages she would have had grounds for complaint.