ATTACHMENT OF WAGES.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVII, Issue 1362, 28 May 1895, Page 5

ATTACHMENT OF WAGES.

A LEGISLATIVE BLUNDER. A case heard in the S.M. Court at Invercargill last week seems to indicate that Parliament, in passing the Resident Magistrate Court Act, 1893, did not realise the possibilities of hardship under the provisions for compelling a sub-debtor— i.e., an employer—to pay over workers' wages in toto to satisfy a judgment creditor, the effect being to place working men in a far worse position than under the Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt Act. The parties were a tailor and a workman named Aston, for whom he had made a suit, and the proceedings were on a judgment summons. The liability was admitted, and had Aston not been in work the S.M. would have decided in the ordinary way whether plaintiff had or had not proved that defendant had been possessed of means to pay, and in all probability would have ordered payment by instalments, with imprisonment in default. Aston, who had been out of work owing to bad sight, had, however, recently got employment in the twine works, and his employers were summoned to show cause why they should not hand over all moneys owing to Aston to satisfy the judgment. Mr Wade, for defendant, urged that it could not have the intention of Parliament to give power to strip a man and his family of their entire means of living for a month. If so, members of Parliament had taken care to secure their honoraria from seizure but left the worker to the mercy of this provision of the new Act, and the position was worse instead of better than before. The S.M. held that he was bound to attach Aston's wages, and in consequence he and his family are left without means or substance after a long period of enforced idleness.— Evening Star.