FREEZING WORKERS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 148, 19 December 1929, Page 16

FREEZING WORKERS

INTERPRETATION OF AWARD

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

The Arbitration Court has given its decision on several questions referred to it by Mr. E. C. Cutten, S.M., bearing on the interpretation of the freezing works award.

The Court has answered in favour of the union the question whether freezing trade workers working for two different employers in one week are entitled to receive the weekly minimum wage from each of their employers irrespective of the hours worked.

The Court is at present preparing a new award covering the freezing and allied industries, and this will give an opportunity to deal with the anomaly that at present exists.

The question arose from a claim by the Auckland Abattoir Assistants and Freezing Works Employees' Union against W. and R. Fletcher (N.Z.), Ltd., for £20 as a penalty for an alleged breach of award. The alleged breach was failing to pay Alfred Hill, a slaughterman 's assistant, a minimum average of 8s a day.

Mr. E. C. Cutten, S.M., who heard the case, submitted three questions to the Arbitration Court. In answering these questions the Court has repeated its decision that the requirement that the men are to be paid a minimum average of not less than 8s a day means that the men are to receive £2 8s a week. There was no doubt that concurrent employments were not in the contemplation of the framers of the sub-clause when it was drafted. The sub-clause was clear and precis©- in its wording, and it was impossible, to read into it a proviso that only the principal employer of the worker was responsible for ■ the payment of the minimum average wage. There was no conclusion open to the Court but that the company was responsible for the payment of the minimum average rates.

The case was remitted to the Magis trate for decision. '