POPULATION BASIS OF AWARD RATES

Evening Star, Issue 22630, 23 April 1937, Page 13

POPULATION BASIS OF AWARD RATES

ACTION ACAiNST ROTORUA NEWSPAPER [?n United Press Association.] ROTORUA, April 22. “ The trouble is that these people go along and make inelastic, cumbersome, and inaccurate awards, and then expect the courts to interpret them,” said Mr S. L. Paterson,- S.M., to-day, during the hearing of a case in the Rotorua Magistate’s Court involving an" alleged breach of the New Zealand typographical workers’ award. ' The Labour Department claimed £lO as a penalty from the publishers of the Rotorua ‘ Morning Post,’ on the grounds that they had employed men at less than the minimum rates fixed for the employees of a printing establishment in towns of a population of more than 6,000. The defendants contended that, although the last census had shown the population of Rotorua to be 6,531, they had information that it was only >5,494, which they claimed entitled them to pay the wages the award provided for towns of a population of 3,000 and under 6,000. They contended that a large number of visitors, estimated by the Government Statistician at 1,237, were in Rotorua at the time of the taking of the census, and these should not be considered as for wing a part of the population for the purposes of the award.

■' The Magistrate, who reserved his decision. said that a definition of population appeared to be very necessary in the award. At the present time the award was most inelastic and cumbersome, v