New Award For Carpet Factory Employees

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30858, 17 September 1965, Page 17

New Award For Carpet Factory Employees

A new award for Northern, Wellington, and Canterbury carpet factories’ employees, issued by the Arbitration Court, gives substantial increases in minimum rates for male, female and junior employees. They range from 3|d an hour for several classifications of adult male workers to about 2}d an hour increase for senior females who have served three years and upwards. Junior females have received increases on minimum weekly rates of from 2s 2d to ss.

The parties to the new award are the New Zealand Federated Woollen Mills and Hosiery Factory Employees' Association of Workers and the New Zealand Carpet Manufacturers’ Industrial Union of Employers. The top minimum rate for certain classifications of male workers, after five years continuous service, is now 8s 3jd an hour.

Senior females employed in carpet factories in certain capacities will now receive a minimum of 5s 4d an hour. The award will be retrospective from May 3, 1965. It will continue till April 30, 1967. A comment by the employees’ representative of the court (Mr A. B. Grant) said that he was of the opinion there should be an upward alteration in what could be called the protective 15 per cent basis mentioned in clause 5 (a) of the award. He thought, however, that any such alteration should be arrived at by agreement of the parties rather than be introduced by the Court. The clause referred to by Mr Grant, concents piecework in which there has been no alteration in the new award.

In any department where piecework is worked, the new award states, the rate shall be so fixed that the average piecework earnings in that department shall not be less than 15 per cent above the appropriate time rate prescribed in the award. Mr Grant said that a piecework system, or, any other bonus or incentive scheme, was introduced primarily to increase production and to encourage the workers to work at an even faster tempo. “Therefore, and particu-

larly when the labour power of the workers is being sold and bought on a rising labour market. I believe that the ruling rate of wages, and not the award rate, should be the! basis from which the piece-i rate is set,” said Mr Grant. Mr Grant said that he considered that the workers' organisations, in this case and in others, should insist that their incentive bonus, or piecework rates be based upon the ruling or competitive rates for labour rather than the minimum award rates.