CLOTHING TRADES AWARD

Evening Star, Issue 22988, 20 June 1938, Page 8

CLOTHING TRADES AWARD

FEDERATION SECRETARY REPLIES [Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, June 20. A reply to criticism by Mr Macdonald, secretary of the Canterbury Employers’ Association of the Dominion clothing trades award, is made by Mr Cornwell, secretary of the Federation of Labour. ... . , He says: The last clothing trades award was made by Mr Justice Pug® on September 17, 1936, and provided for female apprentices and improvers being paid the Factories Act rates of wages which were set out in the .award, and female journeymen receiving £2 5s a week. In the last woollen workers’ award issued by Mr Justice Frazer on August 31, 1928, rates for girls were sst out. W&ile starting at the same rate as the clothing trades, they did not give the 4s increment provided for by the Factories Act of 1936, so that the Act operated from the time it came into force, giving the girls in woollen mills identically the same rates as female apprentices and improvers in the clothing factories. Mr Macdonald could not charge one court with running contrary to the decisions of tho other court, as the clothing trades award copied the rates issued by the First Court so far as females were concerned. If, as Mr Macdonald said, some increase was expected, why didn’t he offer it to the workers in the Conciliation Council, in which case he might have got an award more to his liking. , “I am unable to read from the memorandum to the award where Mr Justice Hunter said the court cannot be concerned with the ability of an industry to pay,” said Mr Cornwell. “ What I read is Mr Justice Hunter saying that the matter of tariffs is one for the legislature, not the court. It might be to Mr Macdonald’s advantage, seeing he is a young advocate in industrial matters, to point out to 1 him that judges of the Arbitration Court, not only in this country but in Australia, have repeatedly stated that an industry that could not pay a living wage didn’t deserve any consideration, and if Mr Macdonald can argue that the rates of wages as set out in the clothing trades award give anything but a bare living wage to the workers concerned, I’ll he pleased to hear it.”-