CASUAL WORKERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 4

CASUAL WORKERS

HOLIDAY PAYMENT

THE LEGAL REQUIREMENT

(By Telegraph.-■-Prpsa Association.)

HASTINGS, This Day.

"Surely, casual workers are not entitled to holidays on full pay?" asked Mr. C. H. Slater, agent for the employers, when the question of noli-, days was under discussion at a sitting of the conciliation council in Hastings concerning the'fruit-packers' industrial dispute. : . The Commissioner (Mr. M. J. Reardon): Yes. That is the law at the present time.

Mr. Reardon read extracts from the Factories Act which decreed that any person employed in a factory within 14 days of a holiday must be paid for that holiday.

• "Do you mean to say that if I engage a man on Monday and Thursday is a holiday, I.must pay him for the Thursday?" asked Mr. Slater.

"Yes," ' replied the Commissioner, "that is the law as I understand it."

.' "But what if he works for someone else on the Tuesday and another man again on the Wednesday. He's only a casual employee, you know," said Mr. Slater.

The Commissioner said that payment would be proportioned among the three employers. He pointed out there was. little doubt that when framing the legislation there was in the minds of legislators an attempt many years ago to defeat the law, and so that, this would be made practically impossible it had been necessary to make the condition apply to an extreme case.