BOXING DAY SHOPPING

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30601, 18 November 1964, Page 5

BOXING DAY SHOPPING

New Brighton Position

New Brighton shopkeepers with exemptions for trading on Saturdays could open for trading on the Saturdays of December 26 and January 2, said the assistant district superintendent of the Department of Labour (Mr A. B. Tuck). These New Brighton shopkeepers, he said, could also legally stay open on both these Saturday nights. In each case the holiday could be transferred to the Monday under the Public Holidays Act. Mr Tuck said that whether the New Brighton shopkeepers with exemptions stayed open on these Saturdays was entirely up to them.

When the president of the New Zealand Shop Assistants’ Federation (Mr P. M. Velvin) was asked what his union’s attitude would be to December 26 and January 2 opening at New Brighton, he said: “I don’t know yet. It will not be long before I give you an answer.”

Mr Velvin said that his union had no intention of disregarding the expressed and signed opinions of thousands of its members on the questions of any alteration or extension of present shopping hours and also on the introduction of an additional late night in Christmas week. He was replying to a statement by the secretary of the New Zealand Retailers’ Federation (Mr D. D. Munro). “It is significant that we have not received any complaints about the procedure adopted to get the views of our individual members,” said Mr Velvin. Mr Velvin said that Mr Munro’s implication that the union’s method was in some way unethical or that employers were the only ones who could be expected to obtain the facts could not be accepted.