WAGE-PAYMENT TIME LIMIT

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 42, 18 August 1916, Page 6

WAGE-PAYMENT TIME LIMIT

The one shilling penalty imposed by tlie Magistrate yesterday on a local boot manufacturing firm deserves more than passing notice. Under an agreement between masters and employees in the trade, as embodied in an award of the Arbitration Court, it is provided, among other. things, that wages must be paid weekly, and that " the. employer must arrange that all men are paid within five minutes from the close of the day on which the wages are paid." Presumably "men" includes "women"; and, if this is so, it would seem to be physically impossible to pay the employees of a large boot-manufacturing firm within the time stated unless— and here, lies the doubt—the agreement contemplated the payment of wages within the employer's time. If the paying of the wages were begun some time before stop-work—how long would depend on the efficiency of the paying-out arrangements, proportionate to the number to be paid—then the agi-eement, now an award, might be workable. But the Magistrate apparently did not regard the award as contemplating payment of wages during working hours, for ha is .reported as saying that "if an employer attempted substantially to comply with the award by starting to pay out at 5 o'clock, one would conclude he was doing his best." Two alternative conclusions there a^rise : |f the award contemplates payment in working hours, which is a tax on the employers' time, then it raises an issue that should be very important to manufacturers; if, on the othej- hand, the award means payment of wages literally " within five minutes," (say between 5 p.m. and 5.5 p.m.) it is clearly impossible in a big business and shonld not be administered according to the letter. This latter remark is made with a general1 bearing, and not in application to the particular, case before the Court yesterday. Assuming that this award-law be interpreted according to its letter, the firm could not in any case have paid' out between 5 p.m."~and 5.5 p.m., but the prosecuting inspector stated that it did not begin to pay out till 5.9 p.m., and that .aljeged delay may ha-ye influenced the Magistrate in imposing the penalty. Employers' time is valuable, but so is employees', and if delay occurs that is, avoidable, it cannot either legally or morally be defended.