JANUARY 22

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 22, 27 January 1943, Page 4

JANUARY 22

DOUBLE-TIME ASPECT

While confirming the action of the chairman in declaring January 22, Anniversary Day, a general port holiday, members of the Wellington Harbour Board last night deplored that the board had been placed in the position of having to interrupt vital war and national work. The chairman, Mr. W. H. Price, explained that as a majority of transport services and merchants were to observe the holiday, with a consequent restriction in the wharf deliveries, and as the board would have been, required to pay approximately £15001 by way of double time, he had declared that the day would be observed as a general holiday on the wharves. Mr. J. W. Andrews said that the \ whole principle had been wrong under war conditions. Though the Governlment had. asked that people should work it had at the same time penalised employers by requiring them to pay double tune for that day. said Mr. M. A. Eliott. Mr. J. O. Johnson took the view that the retailers, by deciding to close down, had taken the bit in their teeth. .:_ Mr. Andrews: They would have had to pay double. _ - , ■ That was so, said Mr. Johnson, but there were awards and agreements, honorably arrived at, which laid down conditions not to-be swept away ma moriient. He suggested that they should express disapprobation, not of the Government but of the retailers, for the action they had taken in deciding to close down in spite of the request made by the Government that work should continue. When trouble accurred with the miners certain members of the board could not get-into print quick enough to condemn them, but now the boot was on the other foot. There was not the slightest objection to the carrying on of work of importance to the war; the hold-up must have had a serious effect upon wharf shed congestion, but no one heard anything from the retailers about that. ■-*-..' Mr. W. J. Blythe: The carriers on such work did work. Mr. Price said that a certain amount of delivery was effected, but as a number of the merchants were, closed deliveries in full could not be made.