GOLD DREDGE EMPLOYEES

Evening Star, Issue 22989, 21 June 1938, Page 15

GOLD DREDGE EMPLOYEES

GENERAL WAGE INCREASE HOLIDAY ALLOWANCE COMPENSATES LONG HOURS [Per United Press Association.] GREYMOUTH, June 20. With a general increase of Is 8d a day the Westland and Nelson Districts’ gold dredges and alluvial goldmining employees’ award has been issued by the Arbitration Court. The award, which operates for two years from today, provides for a 48-hour week of six shifts, the wages varying from 21s 8d a day for engineers, fitters, carpenters, blacksmiths, welders, first engine drivers to 18s 8d for greasers, firemen, strikers, linesmen, and labourers over 19 years of age, the wages for the boys being adjusted by the union secretary and the employer. Dduble pay will be paid for work on Good Friday and Christmas Dav, time and a-half for New Year’s Day, Easter Monday, the King’s Birthday, Labour, and Boxing Days, and the union’s annual meeting day, and a paid holiday of one day. for each 16 days worked not exceeding 18 in a year, allowances being made up to 60 days a year for sickness and up to 80 for injury in the calculations. In a memorandum Mr Justice O’Regan states that as the industry is one in which work is carried on for 24 hours a day in, a six-day week, and it is difficult to arrange shifts to enable a 44-hour week to be worked without consequent disorganisation, it does not appear to be practicable to carry on the industry efficiently on a 44-hour week. It should be noted, too, that the carrying on of the work is peculiarly subject to weather conditions and ‘interruption by floods and the court therefore has provided a working week of 48 hours. As compensation for the extra hours worked as compared with the majority of the workers in most other industries, the court has provided an extended annual holiday on full pay. The clause has been framed somewhat on the lines of agreements recently made in respect to workers in coal mines. It will be understood that the length of the annual holiday given is not because of the nature of the work but because of the extended hours worked. The wages have been fixed in accordance with the court’s standard rates.