INCREASES OPPOSED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 71, 25 March 1939, Page 14

INCREASES OPPOSED

WAGES OF PLUMBERS

EMPLOYERS' STAND

Strong opposition to any further increases in wages beyond the Court's standard rate, which was fixed in the general pronouncement of September, 1937, was voiced by Mr. D. I. Macdonald, on behalf of the employers, when presenting his case in the Arbitration Court yesterday afternoon during the hearing of the New Zealand (except Westland) plumbers' and gasfitters' dispute.

New Zealand was slowly developing as an industrial country with a slowlyincreasing population and could not stand continual increases in costs, he said. It was recognised that the award rate was a minimum rate, and where in some centres there was a temporary shortage of labour those award rates, particularly in the building industry, were very often exceeded by employers in the case of the more highly-skilled men. It was not, however, a justification for raising the whole level of wages throughout New Zealand at a time when the economic condition of the country did not justify it. In fact, if primary industries were taken as a guide, and he submitted that in New Zealand they were the principal guide to prosperity, even a reduction might be justified.

Mr. Macdonald contended that the workers' claims were extravagant, as the cost to the employer under the proposals would show. The cost would be as follows: —Wages, £338; tool and overall allowance, £13; two weeks' holiday, £13; statutory holidays, £10 8s; cycle allowance, £7 16s; total, £382 4s a year, or £7 7s weekly, or 3s 8d an hour. Those figures provided for no overtime. The employers' claims were substantially the existing award.

Representations regarding hours, suburban work, and dirty work were made to the Court by Mr. K. Belford, on behalf of the Union Steam Ship Co. and the Wellington Patent Slip Co.

Decision, was reserved,