DAIRY FACTORY HOURS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 105, 28 January 1938, Page 15

DAIRY FACTORY HOURS

Case At New Plymouth Sixty dairy factories may be affected and a sum of £250,000 in wages annually involved as the result of a test case brought before Mr. W. 11. Woodward, S.M., in the Magistrates’ Court, New Plymouth, on Monday. Mr. Woodward reserved his decision. The case was brought by Mr. F. W 11son, Labour Department inspector, under the Factory Amendment Act, 1930. The charge was against Percy Smith, manager of the Waitoitoi Co-operative Dairy Company, of allowing an employee, C. Sadler, to be employed for seven days in each week between August 11, and September 22, 1937. Mr. J. F. V. Stevenson, Wellington, appeared on behalf of the company. The points at issue were whether a manager came within the interpretation of a worker and the exact meaning of the words “regularly employed.” The section of the Act read: “No worker shall be employed for more thou six days in any one week, provided not more than two workers were regularly employed.” It had been the practice in Taranaki, he said, for factories with a manager and two men to work seven days a week, with a six-day week where three men and a manager were employed. The staff at the Waitoitoi factory comprised a manager and one other man, but later an extra hand was engaged. If Smith, the manager, was deemed to be a worker, then there were three workers between August an'd September, when seven days a week were worked, said Mr. Wilson. The Waitoitoi factory later engaged another man and began a six-day week. The inspector contended that Smith was still a worker insofar as the offence was concerned, and said he would have an effect upon the men's wages. The question of “regularly employed” was, he said, a matter of whether the department ha'd to take it over a year, over a season, or week by week, to establish whether the factory had more than two men employed. Assuming there was a manager and one man employed, and that an extra hand was takeji on for the flush, then only two men’were regularly employed. Mr. Stevenson outlined the Act at length and drew comparisons on the meaning of the words “manager” and “regularly employed.” He contended that the manager was ,not a worker and said the recent dairy factory workers’ award had not included managers. The dairying industry was in close touch with the Labour Department when the award was made and managers were excluded from the workers’ award. Mr. Stevenson stated that if managers were classed as workers it would affect about 60 factories in the Dominion and involve the payment of about £230,000 extra in wages.