LATE FOR DINNER

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 81, 6 April 1938, Page 13

LATE FOR DINNER

THE WIFE'S "BLAST"

A MEAL-MONEY QUESTION

AHhough the representatives of the workers and the employers engaged in the Dominion gasworks dispute, which is being heard by the Court of Arbitration, have agreed on the amount to be "paid for meal money—ls 6d— when men are required to work overtime, they told the Court today that they differed on the question of the time men should be required to work to before they qualified for the meal money. . ■ X

Mr. W. E. Anderson, on * behalf of the employers, urged that1 the time should be after 6 p.m., and Mr. J. Roberts, for the workers, submitted that it was reasonable that the money, should be paid after 5.30 p.m.

Mr. Anderson contended that the employers' , proposal was . a commonsense one. If, he said, a man was required to work after 5 p.m. and'finished at 5.30 p.m., he could quite easily go home and get his tea. Tea money was intended to cover out-of-pocket expenses, and in the case of a man'who finished work at 5.30 p.m., he Submitted, there was- no out-of-pocket expense. Mr. Roberts referred to the case gf a man who did not have a home of his own and lived in a boarding-house. The 40-hour week operated ?in board-ing-houses, he said, and, if a man knocked off work at 6 p.m., by the time.he got to the boarding-house the probability was that tea would be off. Even in the case.of married men who were called upon to work >back, their wives were caused inconvenience.

Amidst laughter Mr. Roberts conr tended that it was worth Is 6d very often for the "blast" one got when one was expected home-at a certain time and arrived an hour or so late. "If every man in this court spoke the truth," he 'added, "he would tell the Court that wives do not like being kept waiting until 7 o'clock."

The matter is to be left to the Court to decide. ' '