Council Suspends Schoolboys' Work

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31461, 30 August 1967, Page 16

Council Suspends Schoolboys ' Work

(N.Z. Preu Annotation) AUCKLAND, Aug. 29. Eight schoolboys who were painting manhole covers in Glenfield have been suspended pending “clarification,” said the chairman of the Waite-

mata County Council, Mr W. B. Souter, today. He said the council paymaster’s records showed that last week the boys were paid a gross wage of $9.72. Yesterday two of the boys said they had worked only two full days because of the weather. Mr Souter said the work was only casual and would not keep persons employed for any length of time. The secretary of the Labourers’ Union, Mr H. Kay, said his union would “wait and see what happens." He Mid that if the county continued to employ schoolboys instead of persons from the unemployed ranks the union would take “definite action.”

“We raise strong objection to the statement made by Mr Souter that unemployed men would not be acceptable in backyards," said. Mr Kay. “It was uncalled for. Who is to say that schoolboys are more acceptable in backyards, than unemployed? “It is a slight on the unemployed men of Auckland,” he said.

The manhole covers are being painted in preparation for an aerial survey soon to be carried out. Similar work is

to be done in other areas. The Government has no authority to stop the Waitemata County Council from paying schoolboys $32 a week to paint manhole covers, even though there are more than 800 labourers unemployed in the Auckland district, the Minister of Labour (Mr Shand) told Parliament today. Local Authorities were not under his jurisdiction, he added.

He was replying to an urgent question by Dr A. M. Finlay (Lab., Wadtakere).