THE UNEMPLOYED

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 137, 6 December 1935, Page 10

THE UNEMPLOYED

EAELY EELIEF

AMENDING LABOUR LAWS

. One of. the haraest-worked men in the Cabinet team will be the Hon. H. T. Armstrong, Minister of Employment, Labour, and Immigration, and when the session is held early next year he will have charge of some of the most important of the Government's legislation.

Interviewed immediately after he was sworn in this morning, he said he realised that he had a stiff task ahead of him but he felt confident that he would be equal to it. "Until Christmas," he said, "I will be fully occupied with unemployment matters and in the New Year I will devote some time to very necessary amendments to the labour laws. Amendments will be introduced to the Factories Act, Apprentices Act, Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, and the Shops and Offices Act. Legislation regarding apprentices is urgently necessary, as the number of registered apprentices has fallen from over 10,000 a few years ago to just over 3000 at. the present time." The workers' and employers' right of appeal under the Arbitration Act would have to be restored, hut just how the Arbitration Court would be constituted in future could not be determined at present. He proposed lo examine the constitution of the Court to see in which directions it could he improved. STATUTORY MINIMUM WAGE. He also proposed to submit to Cabinet at the earliest opportunity proposals for legislation providing for a statutory minimum wage for men and women. The Arbitration Court would have to determine what wages over and above the irreducible minimum were to be paid in particular industries.

Regarding unemployment, Mr. Armstrong said he was not in a position at the moment to say what was the state