BUTCHERS' WAGES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 78, 29 September 1938, Page 5

BUTCHERS' WAGES

INCREASE AWARDED

SPREAD OF HOURS

An increase of 7s 6d weekly to adult workers is granted by the Second Court of-Arbitration in the Wellington Butchers' award, issued today. The weekly wages are as follows: —First shopmen or men in charge, £6 ss; second shopmen;, £5 12s 6d; first smallgoods men, £6 ss; slaughtermen, £5 12s 6d; men in charge of hawking carts, £5 12s 6d; all other workers, £5 3s 6d. Youths' wages range from £1 8s at 15 to £3 between 19 and 21.

Forty-four hours are to constitute a week's work, to be worked either between 7.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on five days and 8 a.m. and noon on the weekly half-holiday, or between. 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on five days and 8 a.m. and noon on the half-holiday. Suitable provision is made for work before 7.30 a.m., and there is a modification of hours for pork butchers' shops. An elaborate schedule of statutory holidaxs for different districts of the Wellington Province is included in the award, which allows an annual holiday of one week on full pay. The award is to operate for one year from October 3.

"The workers by their counter-pro-posals asked for a 40-hour five-day week," said Mr. Justice Hunter in a memorandum. "A similar application was made to the Court of Arbitration in 1936 and the Court on August 5, 1936, delivered judgment reducing the hours of work from forty-eight to forty-four and permitting Saturday work. At the hearing _of this dispute ho evidence was called by the union and the evidence called by the employers satisfied the Court that it is impracticable to carry on the industry efficiently on a 40-hour week. - . . "Following its decisions in the grocers', chemists', and shop assistants' awards recently issued and for reasons set out in the memorandum to the firstnamed award, the Court has granted an increase in wages of 7s 6d weekly to adult workers. It is true that butchers do not work a late night, but they have early Starting. "Mr. Croskery does not agree with the hours and annual holiday awarded and his dissenting opinion is subjoined. He objects to the span of hours being 45 or 45£ for 44 hours' work and makes reference to the legislation in connection with the 40-hour week. It is obvious that this matter has nothing whatever to do with that legislation. In the case of the Otago butchers' award the Court (Mr. Justice Page presiding) following the agreement of the parties, made provision for a 44-hour week with a span of 47£ hours." DISSENTING OPINION. In his dissenting opinion, Mr. A. W. Croskery, the workers' representative, said that in previous awards covering these workers in the.Wellington industrial district for many years past it had always been the practice of the Court to keep the daily span of hours in compliance with the weekly hours awarded. A majority of the Court had on this occasion departed, from the long-established practice by allowing the forty-four hours to be worked inside a span of forty-five hours in one case and forty-five and a half hqurs in another. In Mr. Croskery's opinion it appeared futile for the Legislature to reduce hours by Statute if the Court •refused to take cognisance, of it. He was also of the opinion that the workers 'should have received an annual "holiday of two weeks on full pay as was awarded by the Court to clerical workers, otherwise there was the unreasonable position of the clerk in the establishment receiving two weeks' annual leave and the other workers employed by the same firm only one.