GENERAL LABOURERS

Evening Star, Issue 22620, 12 April 1937, Page 6

GENERAL LABOURERS

ARBITRATION COURT AWARD HOURLY RATE OF WAGES FIXED An award covering the wages and working conditons ot Otago builders, contractors, and general labourers in Otago has been filed by the Arbitration Court.

A forty-hour week has been fixed,, eight hours a day to be worked on five days of the week between 7.30 a.ra. and 12 noon, and 12.30, p.m. and 5 p.m. for builders’ labourers. Labourers in charge, of derricks, cranes, or concrete mixers, or employed in hod-carrying, scaffolding, or dismantling scaffolding over 401 t high, or wheeling bricks on scaffold, shall be paid not less than 2s sid per hour. All other labourers employed in connection with building operations shall be paid not less than 2s 2id per hour. For contractors’ labourers work shall commence not earlier than 7.30 a.m. and cease at 5 p.m., and one hour, or a shorter period by mutual agreement between the employer and the worker, shall be allowed for dinner each day. An employer may wox-k shifts at ordinary rates at. other than the hours specified herein. In tunnel work the hours shall not exceed eight per day, with half an hour for crib-time. A tunnel must be 20ft or more in length between shafts, or must be timbered, before it can be treated as a tunnel for the purpose of this clause. An extra Is a day is provided for in the case of work in tunnels that are wet or have foul air. Six hours shall constitute a day’s work in such places, and workers shall be paid as if they had worked eight hours. An extra Is a day is also provided for in wet places other than a tunnel.

Hourly rates are fixed as follows: Labourers employed in tunnels as defined, 2s 5Jd; labourers employed in trenches of a depth of 6ft or over, 2s 4Jd; labourers employed at asphalt or tar work, 2s 3Jd; labourers employed in concrete work, pick and shovel work, sewer work, kerbing, and channelling work, laying and cleaning drains, and all other work of the same kind, 2s 2%d. For all labourers overtime in excess of the daily hours is to be paid for at the rate of time and a-half for the first three hours and double time thereafter. Work done on Christmas Day, Good Friday, Sunday, New Year’s Day, Easter Monday, Labour Day, or Boxing Day shall be paid for at the rate of double time.

Youths may be employed at the following rates a week: —Up to 17 years of age, £1 10s; up to 18 years of age, £2; up to 19 years of age, £2 10s; up to 20 years of age, £3; thereafter, adult rates. The proportion of youths shall be not more than one to every live men fully employed. Youths under 20 years of age shall not be permitted to be shot-firers.

Provision is also made for suburban work and country work. In a memorandum to the award the president of the court (His Honour Mr Justice Page) says;—“The court has in recent awards adopted the policy of restoring the rates prevailing in 1931. increased to such a figure as will a worker to earn as much per week in a 40-hour week as he would have been able to earn in the longer week prevailing in 1931. One of the anomalies in this connection is that in different districts different hours were worked in this industry varying from 44 to 48 hours per week, and in the Otago award in force in 1931 builders’ labourers had a 44-hour week and contractors’ labourers a 47-hour week, so that the hourly rate .if based on the 1931 rates would. vary for the two classes, of workers, covered- by this award, and would vary also in the different districts, the rates ranging from 2s Oid to 2s 2id. We have decided to adopt the highest of these rates as the basis of the present award. “This is an industry in which the average worker loses time due to bad weather and to his having to go from job to job to obtain work. In view of the provisions of the legislation relating to a basic wage, we think that the court should adopt the policy of fixing an ■ hourly wage which will enable _ the average worker following this industry to earn on an average such income as may be considered reasonable, for his class of employment in relation' to the basic wage. “ The evidence before us in the present case is, in our view, insufficient to enable us to fix on a Dominion basis this relationship of the casual rate of pay to the basic wage. We require fuller evidence, including statistics or figures showing the time lost by the average casual worker who follows this industry. “ We think, further, that this is an industry in which a weekly rate of pay, as well as a casual hourly rate, should be fixed. In the present case no such application was made to us. This award has been made for a short period as a temporary measure, and the rates fixed are without prejudice to the further hearing which we have indicated is necessary.”