ARBITRATION COURT

Evening Star, Issue 20315, 25 October 1929, Page 7

ARBITRATION COURT

AN INVERCARGILL CASE The Arbitration Court lias filed the Invercargill (forty-one miles radius) local bodies labourers’ award, which embodied an agreement of the parties in all but wages, the clause regarding which was settled by the court. Tho court decided that the following be the minimum wages to bo paid to the several classes of workers specified herein—that is to say: (a) Labourers employed in tunnels or in shafts not exceeding Bft in depth, or trenches of a depth of 6ft or oyer, or in timbering trenches over 6ft in depth, 2s Id per hour. Where shafts are sunk to a depth exceeding Sft, then the following rates of wages shall be paid:—Excavation from Sft to 20ft in depth, 2s 3d per hour; 20ft to 30ft, 2s 4d per hour; in excess of 30ft, 2s 6d per hour, (b) Labourers employed in concrete work, pick and shovel work, sewer work, kerbing and channelling work, cleaning drains, and all other work of the same kind, Is lid per hour, (c) Labourers employed in jointing gas or water mains shall receive not less than 2s per hour, (d) Labourers employed in hammer and drill work or in using explosives, 2s per hour, (e) Labourers actually employed on bitumen or tar kettles or bitumen or tar spraying machines, and labourers actually employed operating a bitumen or tar mixing machine or measuring the materials therefor shall be paid Is per day in addition to their ordinary wages, (f) Labourers actually employed in jointing sower or stormwater drains shall bo paid Is per day in addition to their ordinary wages, (g) Labourers employed in the removal of sludge from the septic tank or cleaning sewerage filter beds shall be paid not less than 2s 6d per hour. They shall also bo provided with watertight gum boots and overalls when necessary. Tho award will come into effect on November 1 and operate for two years. APPRENTICESHIP MATTERS. In the plumbers and gasfitters’ apprenticeship order, made on December 22, 1924, the court lias amended clause 14, for the Otago and Southland district, lying outside a radius of ten miles ‘Tom Oamani and outside the Southland provincial district, by adding tho following words: —“Or for any cause not directly connected with the business of the employer, provided always that during the period of tho annual compulsory military training the employer shall pay tho difference, if any, between tho pay received by any apprentice from tho Defence Department and the wages ordinarily payable to such apprentice.” For the ■Southland district the following amendment to clause 14 has been made ; “For time spent in a military training camp an employer shall pay an apprentice such sum as will bring the total payments received by the apprentice from the military authorities up to the amount of wages that would bo payable for the same period had the apprentice been engaged in his ordinary service with the employer.’ An order has been made by tho court in respect to tho conditions of apprentices in the electrical trade in Otago and Southland district excepting that part which is included in Southland, Wallace, Fiord, and Stewart Counties and the Kingston Riding of the Lake County. Tho order embraces the recommendations of the Apprenticeship Committee.