APPARENT GAP IN LAW

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 302, 17 September 1936, Page 12

APPARENT GAP IN LAW

Charges Against Milk Vendors Adjourned EMPLOYEES’' HOURS OF WORK By Telegraph—Brest) Association. Christchurch, September 16. Ai) apparent gap in the law presented a problem to the magistrate, Mr. E. C. Levvey, S.M., in court to-day, when charges under the Shops and Offices Act affecting the employment of Assistants and milk roundsmen were brought against several of the larger milk vendors who employ labour and control fairly large establishments. The magistrate held that the premises in which defendants carried on business could not all be classed as factories, nor were they shops. He thought rather that the legislation was lacking in any provisions specifically covering them. One 1 establishment in which milk was regularly pasteurised he hteld to be a factory. The magistrate formally dismissed one charge and adjourned the others sine die to allow the Labour Department to consider whether it would carry the matter further. It was stated during the hearing that the decision in the cases would be of the greatest importance in the milk-vending business in the city. One of the defendants in evidence said that unless the position of the large businesses could be clearly defined the distribution of milk would be forced back entirely on to individual roundsmen who employed no labour. The charges were of employing men in excess of 48 hours a week and failing to pay overtime, employing men as shop assistants and failing to pay them overtime for the extended hours, employing men more than five hours continously without an interval of at least one hour for a meal, employing men before 3 a.m. and failing to allow employees a holiday from 1 p.m. on one working day.