PRIVATE HOTELS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 68, 13 December 1933, Page 4

PRIVATE HOTELS

Wages; for Female Workers RULING OF COURT The Arbitration Court lias given, its opinion in connection with the application by the inspector of awards at Dunedin asking for interpretation of the order fixing the minimum rates of wages for female workers in private hotels. ■' “For the purposes ot' tbtj Shops and Offices Act, 1921-22,” runs the opinion of the court, "the word ’shop’ includes (section 2) an hotel, but does not include a private hotel or boardinghouse in which less than three persons are usually employed other than members of the occupier’s family, and the word •restaurant’ includes a private hotel or boardinghouse in which three or more persons are usually employed other than members of the occupier's family. These definitions are, of course, inserted in the Shops and Offices Act merely for the purpose of indicating the classes of establishment to which the provisions of that Act apply, and do not have any bearing on the meaning to be given to the term 'private hotel’ in relation to an application under section 7 (5) of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Act, 1932.

•‘The court must put to itself the question: ‘What is a private hotel?’ or •Wbat is meant by the private hotel industry?’ In the opinion of the court, a private hotel, as distinguished from a boardinghouse, must be taken to be any premises in which a business similar to that of a licensed hotel (with the exception of tbe. bar trade), including the provision and sale of meals to the general public, js carried on. It caters for the general public by supplying single meals and beds for a single night, as a licensed hotel does, whereas a boardinghouse caters more specially for permanent and semi-permanent guests. The size of the establishment and the number of tbe staff employed do not affect the position; it is solely a matter of tbe class of business carried on. "In the opinion of the-court, the order is binding on the proprietors of all private hotels as above defined.”