UNION’S CLAIMS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 105, 28 January 1938, Page 8

UNION’S CLAIMS

Stonemasons Seek 35-Hour Week \ By Telegraph—Press Association. Christchurch, January 26. A working ■week of 35 hours, 23 days holiday each year on full pay, rates of pay ranging from minimum of 3/- to 3/6 an hour and provision for payment of first-class railway fare when engaged on country work—these demands are included in clauses in an application made by the New Zealand Stonemasons’ Industrial Union of Workers in a dispute with employers to be heard in Conciliation Council in Wellington on February 15. It is intended that the award should operate throughout the whole of New Zealand, and the union claims that its term should be 12 months. The New Zealand Builders and Contractors Association of Employers, several borough councils -and stonemasons and monumental masons have been listed as parties to the proposed award. Stonemasons are defined as “men qualified and engaged to build, fix or cut, shape and finish by hand or machine any class of work either iu sandstone, trachyte, granite, bluestone, marble or limestone and to fix and to cut terra-cotta or any other stone substitute”” Work done in cemeteries in fixing memorials or erecting stone tablets is also classified as stonemasons’ work The hours of work claimed are seven hours daily for five days a week, with a rate of 3/6 au hour for stonemasons down to a minimum of 3/--an hour for labourers. Au extra 3/- a day is asked for foremen in charge of four or more workers. On outside jobs extra rates are also claimed for men engaged in working sandstone, and granite. The claims include a period of 10 successive days’ Holiday on full pay, as well as statutory holidays. The union also asks that the three days following Boxing Day should be observed as holidays, work done on these days to be paid fbr at double rates. Should Christmas Day, Boxing Day or any of the three following days fall on Sunday, it is asked that the Christmas and New’ Year holidays be adjusted so that seven successive working days shall be observed as holidays.