Test Case On Dairies’ Status

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30158, 15 June 1963, Page 12

Test Case On Dairies’ Status

(New Zealand Press Assoitalion)

WELLINGTON, June 14. The Arbitration Court today adjourned sine die the hearing of what defence counsel termed a test case to define the status of dairies selling grocery lines.

Treadwell Street Dairy (1961) Ltd., Naenae, represented by Mr R. E. Taylor, was alleged by the inspector of awards to have breached the New Zealand (except Northern Industrial District other than Gisborne Judicial District) Retail Grocers’ Assistants' Award by underpaying two employees.

The plaintiff claimed, through Mr G. H. Sorrell, that the defendant failed to pay the minimum wage of 7s 2d an hour which the award provides for casual grocers' assistants.

Arrears totalling £566 12s 6d and penalties totalling £2O were claimed.

The case was heard before Mr Justice Tyndall, Mr W.

N. Hewitt (employers' representative), and Mr A. B. Grant (workers' representative). Yesterday a Labour Department officer told how. in July, 1962. he had found a substantial amount of grocery items among stock for sale in the diary. The two employees told of their duties in the shop.

Mrs Hazel Horsfall estimated that half her time was spent handling groceries. Mrs Doris Schofer said she, too, had sold grocery lines. After a request for higher wages had been refused she said, “1 joined the union and asked them what I should be paid. They said there was no award for dairies. I told them I worked with groceries. They said they would look into it.” Mr Sorrell submitted that a shopkeeper who entered into the grocery business in any way was in direct competition with shops which relied solely on sales of grocery lines, and should be bound by the grocery assistants' award.

Today Mr Taylor said that if the plaintiff were to succeed it would be tantamount to the Court “joining all dairy proprietors as subsequent parties to the grocers’ award."

"It would seem repugnant if a shop, being for the purpose of the Shops and Offices Act declared not to be substantially engaged in the retail grocery business in terms of the selling of a selected list of goods were, for the purpose of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, held to be substantially engaged in the retail grocery business in terms of the same list of goods," said Mr Taylor.

The complications arising out of the case were "tremendous," said his Honour. “It's a situaiton which has worried me for more than 20 years—how to define which is a grocer's shop and which a dairy.”