HIGHER WAGES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 144, 21 June 1938, Page 5

HIGHER WAGES

GOLD DREDGE WORKERS

COURT ISSUES AWARD

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

GREYMOUTH, June 20.

[ A general wage increase of Is 8d a day is granted in the Westland and Nelson Districts Gold Dredges Alluvial Gold Mining Employees' Award, which has been issued by the Arbitration Court. The award, which operates for two years from today, provides for a 48-hour week of six shifts.

Wages vary from 21s 8d a day for engineers, fitters, carpenters, blacksmiths, welders, and engine-drivers, to 18s 8d for greasers, firemen, strikers, and linesmen and labourers over 19 years of age. The wages of boys are to be adjusted by the union secretary and the employer. Double pay is granted for Good Friday and Christmas Day, and time and a half for New Year's Day, Easter Monday, King's Birthday, Labour Day, Boxing Day, and the day of the union's annual meeting. There is to be a paid holiday of one day for each 16 worked, not exceeding 48 in the year, allowances being made up to 60 days in the year for sickness, and up to 80 for injury in the calculations.

In a memorandum Mr. Justice O'Regan states: "As the industry is one in which work is carried on for 24 hours a day on six days of the' week, and it is difficult to arrange shifts to enable a 40-hour week to be worked without consequent disorganisation, it does not appear to be practicable to carry on the industry efficiently on a 40-hour week. It should be noted, too, that the carrying on of work is peculiarly subject to weather conditions and interruption by floods. The Court therefore provided a working week of 48 hours. As compensation for the extra hours worked compared with the majority of workers in most other industries, the Court provided an extended annual holiday on full pay, the clause being framed somewhat on the lines of the agreements recently made in respect to workers in coal mines. It must be understood that the length of the annual holiday given is not because of the nature of the work but because of the extended hours. The rates of wages have been fixed in accordance with the Court's standard rates."