Claim For Exemption From Award Opposed

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29760, 1 March 1962, Page 15

Claim For Exemption From Award Opposed

( N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, February 28. . n , a PP ea l to the Arbitration Court to prevent the introduction of chaos into the trade union movement was made by the representative of the Wellington and Taranaki Shop Assistants’ I mon (Mr P. M. Velvin) in the Court today.

Mr Velvin was commenting on the application of Davis Butchery, Ltd., Palmerston North, for full or partial exemption from the Taranaki and Wellington butchers’ award on the grounds that some of its clauses went against the religious convictions of the company’s directors and shareholders.

Mr Velvin and Mr R. E. Taylor, for the Manawatu maiter butchers and the Wellington Meat Retailers’ Industrial Union of Employers, claimed that granting exemption to George Frederick Davies was a precedent to granting similar exemptions to all members of the Exclusive Brethren to which the butchery's directors belong and would open the way to all manner of other persons who might seek to contract out of the Court’s awards. Jessie Dorothy Davis, a shareholder and director of the butchery, said she walked in the same Christian fellowship as her husband. She believed it was contrary to the Scriptures to comply with all the conditions of the award.

If the will of God conflicted with the law of the land, she would have to obey the will of God. She was firmly with her husband in what he believed.

To Mr Justice Tyndall. Mrs Davis said a copy of the award had been displayed

in the shop since the first day of the hearing. His Honour: Congratulations. but in the past this has not been complied with. Stuart Russel Farquhar, a

public accountant, of Palmerston North, and the secretary of Davis Butchery, Ltd., expressed beliefs similar to those of previous witnesses. He said he had resigned from the Society of Accountants because he considered belonging a sin. Wages Queried

Farquhar produced the wages and time book of the butchery and was closely cross-examined by his Honour upon it.

“There are a number of things in the book I cannot understand which seem to involve lower payments to workers than they are entitled to,” his Honour said. After referring to the common w r ay of entering into arrangements for a set amount of take-home pay as a very dangerous practice introducing all sorts of complications, his Honour suggested that the wages book had been manipulated in every case to give the worker the net take-home pay agreed on at the time of his engagement

He said he doubted very much whether every one of these workers understood what had happened in this book.

Explaining why he was

examining the book so closely, his Honour said the application had really resolved itself into one for total exemption. Before the court could consider such an application it would need to be satisfied that the interests of the workers would be preserved, just as if they were under an award.

Mr M. S. Hills, Davis’s advocate, said he had been instructed that if any breaches of the award in payments to workers were discovered, they would be rectified immediately.

His Honour said he needed no such assurance.

Bonus for Boy

His Honour referred to the wage of £lO a week paid to a 15-year-old, Davidson, and to a Christmas bonus of £5OO given to him. He could, on the surface, not escape the view that this boy was a worker under the act.

Mr Hills explained that the bonus related to an illness of Davis's. It was contemplated that the boy would take over the business. At the conclusion of his Honours cross-examination, Mr Hills said there had been no cases of under-payment, the take-home pay being well above the award. His Honour said he accepted it that the total amount of the workers takehome pay agreed on in negcitiaition with their employer had been acknowledged and paid, but that was not really the law. In his submissions Mr Velvin claimed that the evidence of Davis did not entitle him to succeed on the application for total or partial exemption. He found himself questioning the attitude of an employer who stated he was prepared to accept the authority of Parliament as a divinely instituted house of God. It appeared that the concern of Davis and those who supported him was exercised only in matters where they felt they had a direction from God.

Mr Velvin said Davis had told the Court that the fact of his workers being members of a union had not adversely affected his business, and he was content to continue their empolyment. Previous Application The people Davis was associated with were the same people who unsuccessfully gave evidence before the Labour Bills Committee of the House of Representatives on a similar matter. The application before the Court was a continuation of the attitude they had adopted towards the trade movement in general. They had shown they did not observe many of the provisions of the awards, and he hesitated to think how the trade union movement might be affected if they were allowed to continue

Mr Taylor made the general submission that Davis was claiming a dispensation for which there was no statutory authority and that the Court had no jurisdiction to grant such an application. Mr Hills will make his submission to the Court tomorrow morning.