Wants Award To Apply In Factory

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30442, 16 May 1964, Page 3

Wants Award To Apply In Factory

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 15. “It is not that we don’t want industry, but we don’t want any industry that is likely to undercut the rates for industry in New Zealand,” the national secretary of the New Zealand Engineers’ Union (Mr R. Darbyshire) said at the resumed tariff and development inquiry today.

Mr Darbyshire was presenting submissions from his union at the public inquiry into import duties on bicycles and parts and accessories of bicycles, after an application by Morrison Industries, Ltd., Hastings, for tariff protection for its bicycles. Mr Darbyshire said the cycle workers’ award included a minimum wage rate for adult assemblers of bicycles in mass-production factories of 6s 7|d an hour, irrespective of sex. When Morrison Industries, Ltd., began the manufacture and assembling of bicycles it had applied to the Court of Arbitration for exemption from the provisions of the award. Not Bound The Court had held that the company was not bound as a subsequent party to the award, and in its decision had stated that “it would appear to be in the interest of all concerned if an industrial agreement were negotiated between the company and the workers’ union.” This decision was a serious matter for the union, said Mr Darbyshire. It permitted the company to employ adult assemblers if they were males at £1 2s 6d, and adult females at £4 10s 9d a week less than the minimum rates prescribed under the cycle workers’ award.

It also gave the company the same wage advantage over every competitor it had in New Zealand which was importing bicycles completely knocked down and assembling them here. The exemp-

tion also permitted the company to allow a lesser number of paid holidays to its workers assembling bicycles. Mr Darbyshire said his union had endeavoured on several occasions to negotiate an industrial agreement with the company as suggested by the Court of Arbitration in an effort to overcome some, if not all, of the anomalies. “I regret to state that, up to the present date, we have been unsuccessful,” he said.