ENGINE-DRIVERS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 129, 24 February 1939, Page 10

ENGINE-DRIVERS

Application For Dominion Award PARTIES CONFER The parties in the Dominion enginedrivers’ dispute met in private conference in Wellington yesterday in an endeavour to reach a further measure of settlement, the dispute having been referred back to them by the Court of Arbitration. Agreement was reached on a number of points previously unsettled, the major matter referred to the Court, which will hear the dispute today, being wages and holidays. Air. H. J. Bishop appeared for the employers, and Air. J. Robinson (Dunedin) for the workers. It-was agreed that the hours of work should be those of the particular establishment. Wages for youths are l to be the same as in the Wellington award. Steaming up is to be paid for at ordinary rates. The employers dropped their claim for overtime to be at time and a half in connexion, with the annual inspection of machinery. It was agreed to adopt the Court’s machinery clause regarding working extended hours under the Factories’ Act.

The union dropped its claim that workers shall be deemed to be in effective charge of machinery. It was agreed to provide reasonable and practicable safeguards against inclement weather; also that where a worker was transferred to other work, he should be paid whichever was the higher award rate.