Law upsets barmen

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33068, 8 November 1972, Page 2

Law upsets barmen

(By our industrial reporter)

Hotel workers have been trying for a long time to change the law on serving minors with liquor. They say the present legislation is impracticable, often unjust, and intolerable where the police enforce it strictly—which is now happening in Dunedin.

As the law stands, a barman is liable to conviction and a fine of $2O for serving anyone under the age of 20, even if the customer’s appearance might be that of an adult and the customer maintains, when challenged, that he or she is an adult.

In this case, the barman is often in a quandary. If he refuses to serve an aggressive young man, he may be assaulted.

Any refusal to serve customers of dubious age leads to argument, and to delays in serving other customers.

If the customer served is later questioned by the police and proves to be a minor, the conviction and fining of the barman are almost inevitable. Usually the fine does not worry the barman, as it is customarily paid by the proprietor. (In Dunedin, however, there have been so many that some owners are now refusing to pay.) The conviction is a much more serious matter, because apart from anything else it is likely to prejudice any future application by the proprietor for a liquor licence and might affect the barman’s promotion. GROUPS A PROBLEM Another difficulty experienced by barmen, especially on busy evenings, is the minor who drinks with a group, does not approach the bar himself, and stays discreetly in a comer or behind a column or pot-plant. Though the barman might not even have seen him, let alone served him, he is Still liable to conviction if the minor is challenged by the police.

A sore point with barmen is that they are normally fined the maximum of $2O, whereas the only person who could really know that an offence was being committed—the customer—is often fined $5 instead of the maximum in his case of $5O. Women workers, in particular, deeply resent being liable to criminal convictions under a law which seems to them to be unjust. Several Dunedin barmaids

have said that in future they will go to gaol rather than pay fines imposed under the present law.