WOOL AND GRAIN STORE WORKERS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 106, 29 January 1938, Page 13

WOOL AND GRAIN STORE WORKERS

Court Issues New Award 40-HOUR WEEK AND EXTRA PAYMENT By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, January 27. A new award issued by the Arbitration Court relating to the Northern Taranaki, Wellington, Marlborough, Nelson, Otago and Southland wool, grain, hide and manure store employees provides for a 40-hour week, consisting of eight hours a day from Monday to Friday, but a worker may be employed for four hours on Saturday morning at ordinary rates of pay. Casual workers are to be paid not less than 2/5 an hour and permanent hands not less than £4/12/6 a week. Workers mixing manures or bagging manures by hand are to receive 3d. an hour additional. Head storemen are to receive £1 a week extra, and workers classing hides and skins and setting grass seed and grain cleaning machines and workers sampling seed and grain are to receive 2d. an hour additional. Provision is made for overtime and recognised holidays. The award is retrospective from January 1. Dissenting Opinion. In a dissenting opinion, Mr. W. E. Anderson, employers’ representative, disagrees with the hours of work, the weekly wage for permanent hands and head storemen, wages for boys, and extra payments provided. In his opinion the award should have provided for a 44-hour, si-day week. It appeared, he said, that the workers had sold a 40hour week to the employers for the 1937 award, when wages were increased, and the court, by again increasing wages, had charged the employers a second time for the same thing. The extra rate payable to workers engaged in cleaning wool' or rabbitskins could not be justified, nor could the wages fixed for boys.-) The wages fixed for working head storeman would amount to £6/1/9 for a 40-hour week. It was a class of work which carried little or no responsibility and the wages fixed were out of all proportion to those of charge hands under other awards.