THE CLOTHING TRADE DISPUTE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12272, 16 May 1903, Page 7

THE CLOTHING TRADE DISPUTE.

JUDGMENT OF THE ARBITRATION COURT. APPLICATION OF SOUTHERN MANUFACTURERS DISMISSED. THE clerk of awards (Mr. R. Goring Thomas) yesterday received the decision of the Court of Arbitration in connection with the dispute between the New Zealand Clothing ■Manufacturers' Association and the New Zealand Federated and Other Workers Clothing Trade Employees' Industrial Union of Workers, applicants, and the Auckland Clothing Trade Industrial Union of Employers and the Auckland Tailoresses' T_ nion of Workers, objectors. The applicationevidence in connection with which was taken by the Court (Mr. Justice Cooper. President) at Auckland some months since—was one under section 87 of the Act, and sought to extend an award made on May 14, 1902, binding the employers and the industrial unions of workers in the Otago, Southland, Canterbury, and Wellington industrial districts, to the employers in the Northern industrial district (Auckland). Briefly, the Southern manufacturers sought to have the conditions, rate of wages to weekly hands, and piecework "log" fixed in the Southern award made to apply in the case of the Auckland manufacturers, . who had been working tinde. an industrial agreement, which was current at the time of the hearing of the application, and remains so till the judgment of the Court takes effect. The judgment pointed out that if the wages earned under the Auckland log were substantially the same as those paid under the Southern log, then the Court was of opinion that they ought not to impose upon the Auckland manufacturers and workers against their will a log framed on a different principle merely because a majority of the employers and workers in other parts of the colony had chosen to agree upon sucb a log. The main question to be decided, therefore, was as to whether the Auckland log produced to the Auckland workers substantially the same rat-© of earnings a.s the Southern log did to the Southern workers. Examination had shown such to be the case, and the Court adWrdingly affirmed the piecework log prescribed under the industrial agreement existing in the Auckland district. The judgment wont on to contrast the wages paid to weekly hands both in Auckland and the South, and pointed out that when all classes of work were taken together it could not. be suggested that the general rate of wages was lower in Auckland' than in other parts of the colony. Attached to the judgment was the formal order of the Cour::-, stating that as long as the award of May 14, 1902, continued in force the following modified provisions of the same should extend to and bind the Auckland Clothing Trade Industrial Union of Employers and' the Auckland Tailoresses' Union: — 1. The rales of wages to be paid to apprentices shall be: —For first four months, 5s per week; second four months, 7s 6d; third four months, 10s; thereafter an advance of 2s &d per week every three months until 15s per week is reached. The o-irl may after the first 12 months elect to go on piecework. 2. That the number of apprentices shall be limited one to every three operatives (this not to effect the apprentices now employed). 3. That nil competent pressors employed at a weekly v.'ago shall be paid a minimum wage of £2 10s a week, but this shall not be deemed to prevent the employment of pressors at such piecework rates as may bo agreed upon _ between the Advisory Committee prescribed under the industrial agreement and any particular manufacturer. (This refers to incompetent workmen.) The order of the Court -takes effect from May 23, 1903.