BREWERY WORKERS

Grey River Argus, 15 December 1937, Page 6

BREWERY WORKERS

NEW AGREEMENT. WELLINGTON, December 11. After discussion at a Conciliation Council meeting in Wellington yesterday, full settlement was reached in the dispute between the Wellington, Taranaki, and Marlborough Brewers’ Bottlers’, and Bottle Workers, and Aerated Water Employees’ Union and the New Zealand Breweries, Ltd., and other employers. Mr. D. W. Madden, representing New Zealand Breweries, Ltd., explained that a partial settlement had been arrived at in conference between the two parties, and only the points of difference were dealt with by the Council. Under the new agreement workers employed in a brewery or bottling store will be subject to forty-hour week to be worked on live days of the week between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. and from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday. The employers must release all men from Saturday work where possible, and where a man is.required to work on Saturday morning he must be given half a day off another day of the week.

Workers in malthouses are to work forty hours a week on five and a half days of the week. Hours are not to exceed eight a day, to be worked within a spread of thirteen hours. Provision is made for the working of employees on Saturday mornings between the last two weeks in November and the first two weeks in January, and from three weeks before Easter to the end of the week following, at ordinary rates of pay. The employers asked for this provision to cover-special conditions of the industry. Malthouse labourers are to receive £4 15s a week; brewery and bottling-house labourers £4 10s a week; night cellarmen £4 15s a week and coopers £5 8s a week. Overtime is to be paid at the rate of time and a half for the first three hours andi double time thereafter.

Employees are to receive one week’s holiday on full pay after each year of service. Special rates of wages were agreed on for youths. Youths between the ages of eighteen and nineteen are to recieve £2 10s a week; between nineteen and twenty £2 15s; between twenty and twentyone, £3. Casuals are to be paid 2s 6d an hour. Although the new conditions will not come into force until the new award is made by the Court of Arbitration, the new wage rates are to be paid as from to-day.