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Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 8 September 1925, Page 5

A definition of “period” has been given in the Arbitration Court; The word is used in the Lyttelton tally clerks’ award. This (reports the Lyttelton Times) provides that no tallyman, shall be paid for a less period than four hours in'any da}\ The employers contended that the period could be made up by adding hours worked l at different times of the day—two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, for instance. The union contended that it means four hours’ continuous work. The Conciliation Commissioner took the same view as the union, and the court, supporting the Commissioner, has dismissed the employers’ appeal against his decision. “The word ‘period’ is used in the singular number, and means a division of time,” the court states. “A period is a continuous portion of time. It is the custom in the English language to speak of discontinuous portions of time as ‘broken periods,’ and if the singular word prefix the adjective ‘aggregate’ to indicate that it 'is made up of a number of broken periods,”