FARES BACK HOME

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 40, 15 August 1940, Page 13

FARES BACK HOME

WHO SHOULD PAY?

MEN WHO LEFT WAIOURU CAMP JOB

Whether a worker engaged on country work who voluntarily leaves the work before its completion is entitled to be paid his return fare and to be paid for the time occupied in travelling home was a question put before Mr. J. A. Giimour, S.M., hi the Industrial Magistrate's Court today by way of an application by the Inspector of Awards for an interpretation of that question, according to the provisions of the New Zealand carpenters' and joiners award. The case concerned men who were engaged at Auckland for work at Waiouru Military Camp and who left before the completion of the job. The.. Magistrate reserved his decision.

Mr. J. Moulton, for .the union, argued that neither the employer nor the employee was compelled to maintain the worker's employment to the end of a country job, and that when an employer took a worker for country work he was virtually under contract to return the worker to his place of residence.

A PREVIOUS DECISION,

For the employers Mr. W. J. MountJoy contended that the award meant that workers were entitled to return fare only in the event of sickness or accident, ox once every three months. He further submitted that the question before the Court had already been decided in the Arbitration Court by Mr. Justice Frazer, who had 'held, in reply to a similar question, that a worker was entitled to his return fare only after he had been on the job three months and that a worker was not entitled to be paid for travelling time on the way home if he left a job before its completion, unless dismissed by the employer for any other reason than misconduct or incompetence.-

Mr. Mountjoy said that the company concerned was the Residential Construction Company , which . had employed 360 men at Waiouru, a somewhat isolated place, for approximately six weeks up to last Monday. About 16 per cent, of the men had left after working from three days to. five weeks. None of the men who left were paid travelling time or the return fare, except six who left, through illness. Before the men left Auckland they were handed a circular setting out the details and conditions of employment at Waiouru.