SIX-DAY WEEK BILL

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 145, 16 December 1913, Page 7

SIX-DAY WEEK BILL

4HOTEL WORKERS DISSATISFIED. Mr. E. J. Carey, secretary of the 'Wellington Hotel Club and Restaurant 'Workers' Union, states that the Amending Shops and Offices Act, so far as it affects hotelworkers, is a very unsatisfactory measure. Contrary to the general impression it does not provide a six-day week for hotel and restaurant workers, and. in the matter of the whole day's holiday weekly, practically leaves workers in hotels and restaurants, "aa you •were." All that the new legislation does is to order that on the application of the union the Arbitration Court Bhall ; in hotels and restaurants where five or more hands are employed, give the workers a whole day's holiday in each ■week, if it (the Court) considers such a holiday reasonably practicable. The Court has, says Mr. Carey, always had power, since its creation 19 years ago, to award any holiday it considered practicable in any trade. On several occa- . nions, in the hotel trade, application sfor the one day's holiday in seven has beea made by the union and refused by the Court. As a matter of fact the Court has definitely stated that the hours and holidays of hotelworkers are ' matters for the Legislature and not for the Court to deal with. All recent awards in the !rade are silent on the question of hours and holidays. Now Parliament hag turned round and said that the fixing of a six-day week for hotel workers is a matter for the Court. The position, says Mr. Carey, is that the Legislature has dodged its responsibility. For twenty weeks a Select Committee of thirteen members of the House silt to hear evidence from both workers and hotelkeepers, and to consider the proposition. The net result was that on division tha Committee by seven votes to six decided to fix responsibility on the shouldei'3 of ont> man ■ — the President of the Arbitration Court. ■ What the Court will say remains to be recorded.