TRAVELLING TIME

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21755, 3 July 1945, Page 4

TRAVELLING TIME

AWARD EXPERIMENT

PROVISION BY COURT

An important principle relating to suburban work and payment for travelling time has been embodied experimentally in the New Zealand carpenters and joiners’ award, issued by the Arbitration Court. The relevant clause defines suburban work as being all work other than country work performed elsewhere than at an employer's shop.

Workers employed on suburban work more than one and a half miles from central points in their towns are to proceed to and from their work or be conveyed there at the expense of their employer. Time occupied in travelling beyond the central point or from the workers’ home, whichever is the lesser, is to be paid for, but no worker residing less than a mile and a half from the place of work is to be entitled to the allowance. Distances are to be measured by the most convenient mode of access for pedestrians.

In a memorandum on the award. Mr. Justice Tyndall states that the clause, while it would undoubtedly result in increased costs, possessed features which appeared to be fairer both to competing contractors and to workers than the provisions of the past. If .seemed likely that such a clause would lend to encourage Unemployment of workers as near as practicable to their place of abode.

“A majority of the court has decided to incorporate the workers’ claim in its entirety,” continues the memorandum, “but looks upon the decision as something in the nature of an experiment, which must be tested out under practical working conditions before its general adoption is considered.”

In a dissenting opinion, the employers' representative, Mr. W. Cecil Prime, states that the present is no lime to introduce so revolutionary a change with such wide implications, especially in view of the recent substantial wage increases. He also contends that the distance of one and a half miles should be increased to at least two miles, which would probably be no less than the average distance travelled by workers to their ordinary places of employment.