JOURNALISTS' AWARD

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 56, 8 March 1937, Page 11

JOURNALISTS' AWARD

FORTY-HOUR WEEK

A 40-hour week is provided for journalists employed on metropolitan daily newspapers in the four main centres of the Dominion in an award issued by the Arbitration Court. This constitutes the principal change from the previous award, which prescribed a 96-hour fortnight. With the exception of slight adjustments, the salary rates remain the same as obtained in 1931. ■ . . Assistant sub-editors and reporters are allowed three weeks' holiday in each year on full pay, and all others two weeks' holiday. The term of the award is from March ■8, 1937, to March 8, 1938. A dissenting opinion is appended by Mr. W. Cecil Prime, the employers' assessor. He says:— ' ■ "The reorganisation of the journalistic department of newspapers which wilL be necessary to meet the changed conditions so suddenly imposed by the drastic reduction in hours awarded, will in my opinion, make it impracticable to carry on efficiently that por^ tion of the work of newspaper production which is performed by journalists. Recognition of the difficulties involved lies in the fact that' the Journalists Association agreed to an 88-hours fortnight for provincial newspapers. Since the hearing of this dispute an agreement has been come to at Timaru providing a 46 hours' week for journalists It is admittedly difficult to assess accurately the length of time which should be occupied by a reporter, on any assignment, and there are periods in the daily round of a reporter when his working time is largely at his own disposal. , ~ "By conditions agreed on by the parties in this dispute, the work is spread over five and a half days a week. Newspapers are published, except in four, weeks of the year, .on six days a week, but journalists are allowed one whole day and one-halt day off in each week. To spread 40 hours over five and a half days will &ive an average day of a little over feven hours. Where a five-and-a-half day week is necessary the weekly hours should, in my opinion, be 44. "The shortening of hours will have to be met in one of three ways—by speeding up the work, by increasing the number of workers on each of the staffs concerned, or. by decreasing, the size of newspapers, with a consequent diminution in the amount of news. ±5y adopting the first method the quality of the output would necessarily suffer, and efficiency, therefore, be impaired. As to the second method, we were informed that there is an absolute shortage of traned journalists. New men cannot be trained.in a day, and the gradifcg provisions of the award, and other restrictions, make it impossible to provide an adequate number of trained men to increase staffs sufficiently to maintain the journalistic output at its present state of efficiency. As for the third method, this fact may be pointed to: the mechanical staffs of newspapers are, by agreement made recently, working more than 40 hours a week. Whereas until now journalists have worked considerably longer hours than the mechanical staffs, the position will be reversed. If newspaper proprietors are forced to reduce the size of newspapers, the result may well be less employment on the mechanical side. "The sudden reductic-n frojn 48 hours to 40 hours a week must, in my opinion, make it impracticable to carry on efficiently the journalistic side of newspaper production. Publication is tied to strict time-tables, by.which all the rest of the work of producing a newspaper is necessarily bound, me spirit and the letter of the legislation do not, in my opinion, require the drastic reduction of hours imposed by this award."