FACTORIES ACT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 150, 27 May 1936, Page 2

FACTORIES ACT

AMENDMENTS BY COUNCIL. HOUSE APPROVES. WELLINGTON, May 27. Amendments made by the Legislative Council to the Factories Amendment Bill were reported to the House of Representatives yesterday, and. after they had been explained by the Minister of Labour, lion. H. T. Armstrong, were accepted by the House without comment. Mr Armstrong said the Bill would now come into force on July 1 instead of June 1, with the exception of the clauses dealing with the 40-hour week and the eight-hour day, the operation of which would be postponed until September 1. These delays had been requested by employers and by business people generally, and would permit of necessary adjustments being made before the legislation came into effect. An amendment had also been made dealing with compulsory payment for Christmas, New Year and Easter holidays, the Minister continued. The Bill had originally provided that anyone employed during the fortnight preceding any of these holidays would have to receive holiday pay. It had boon pointed out that a man could be dismissed by one employer a few days before a holiday and then receive work from another employer who would be bound to pay him for the holiday. As the clause now stood, proportionate payments would have to be made by the various employers if two or more were concerned, and if no agreement bad previously been reached between them.

The Bill had also been amended so that in dairy factories or creameries employing not more than two workers, those workers could lie employed on a statutory holiday provided that they were given two whole holidays as compensation within a month of the close of the season.

An amendment to the clause dealing with Sunday work in factories provided that where workers wore customarily employed on Sundays—as, for instance, in gas works, cement works, electrical works and the like—they would receive an extra day’s payment for Sunday work in addition to their weekly wage. It had been stated previously that Sunday work would have to he paid for at double time on top of ordinary time. A further amendment, Mr Armstrong added, excluded wool-dumping factories and low-temperature coal carbonisation factories from the provisions of the Bill dealing with restrictions of hours. All that would happen was that workers in these factories in addition to others mentioned in the principal Act would be subject to the six-day week.