SATURDAY SINNERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 71, 21 September 1936, Page 8

SATURDAY SINNERS

Everybody knows that a tradesman (employee) who is covered by the new forty hours' week must not work for his employer for more than forty hours in a week except under permitted conditions of overtime employment but many people are now hearing for the first time, and are hearing from the Minister of Labour, that such a tradesman employee must not work at his trade, for any other person, on the leisure Saturday. The Minister says that if the employee tradesman works for third parties, for pay, on Saturdays, that is not fair to his employer, who is now paying for five days' work as much as he paid for the former five and a half. The Minister's statement carries the implication that there is legal power to prevent a forty hours' week tradesman from working for pay, at his trade, on Saturdays but is there actual power, in practice, to prevent him? Will another regiment of inspectors be required? Will the tradesman be lawfully employed if lie works on Saturday lor nothing lo oblige a friend? Will the prosecution need lo prove payment, and will llial be easy? ' Then lhc.iv

is the ordinary citizen's side of it. If Friday night's storm opens up leaks, will the ordinary citizen be inciting someone to commit an offence —and possibly committing an offence himself —if he pays a plumber or carpenter to do a rush job on Saturday morning? Although Mr. Savage says thatlie and his comrades "did their thinking- before they came to office," does anyone believe that they thought out the consequences of a forty hours' week in a country whose principal industries (primary) are not adapted to it, and whose tradesmen may have their own notions as to what constitutes Saturday leisure? Again, there is the "spreading of the work" by a forty hours' week. How much work will be spread if tradesmen don't stop work and if farmers can't? The Minister's warning has certainly created considerable interest. It is a prelude.