DAIRY FACTORY WORK

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 152, 30 June 1938, Page 7

DAIRY FACTORY WORK

IMPORTANT POINT

FULL COURT'S DECISION

A question of the greatest importance to the dairy industry, particularly to about sixty factories, was decided in judgments delivered today by the Full Court, which allowed an appeal against a conviction by Mr. W. H. Woodward, S.M., of a working manager of a dairy factory. The Court held that a working manager did not come within the I definition of "worker" in the Factories Amendment Act, 1936, and quashed the conviction. The appellant was Percy Smith, working manager of the Waitoitoi Cooperative Dairy Co., Ltd., and he appealed against the Magistrate's judgment, which convicted him of allowing a worker to be employed for seven! days in a week. At the period of the offence of which Smith was convicted there were employed in the factory two men besides himself, though at different times in the year more than two men were employed. The Magistrate held that Smith was a worker within , the meaning of the section, and he decided that the factory could not, in respect of the period in question, be classed as a factory in which not more than two workers were regularly employed, and it could not, therefore, obtain the benefit of the exemption. The questions for the Full Court were whether a worker manager was a worker within the meaning of the section, and what was the meaning of the words "regularly employed" there used. . T The Court consisted of the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers), Mr. Justice Blair, Mr. Justice Kennedy, Mr. Justice Johnston, and Mr. Justice Fair. Mr. J. F. B. Stevenson appeared for the appellant, and Mr. C. H. Taylor, of the Crown Law Office, for the respondent, Frederick Wilson, an inspector of factories, who laid the information against Smith. . The Full Court, in two joint judgments, held that Smith was not a worker under the Act, but agreed with the Magistrate's interpretation of "regularly employed." As the Magistrate convicted Smith, however, on the ground that there were three workers, including Smith, the conviction could not stand,