HOLIDAY PAYMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19838, 7 January 1928, Page 11

HOLIDAY PAYMENT.

CONFECTIONERY EMPLOYEES.

NEW PROVISION IN AWARD. . v.-v t. • . } -wt. • S i- '. ■ 1 i

"EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES'*

New holiday provisions have been inserted by the Arbitration Court in the Biscuit and Confectionery. Employees' Award for both the Northern and the Otago and Southland districts. The clause, which has been substituted for the previous clause 6, is as follows: " 6 (a) The following shall be the recognised holidays:—Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, January 2, Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Easter Monday, Labour and Sovereign's Birthday; (b) for work done on Sundays and holidays, double iime rates shall be paid; (c) no deduction shall be made from the wages of any worker in respect of the following holidays:—Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Labour Day and the birthday of the reigning sovereign. When Christmas Day, New Year's Day or the Sovereign's Birthday falls on a Sunday, the holiday shall be deemed to fall on the next succeeding Monday. The provisions of this sub-clause shall not apply in respect of any other holidays." " Not Establishing Precedent."

The Court, in a lengthy memorandum, ! states the recommendation of the Conciliation Council provided that the nine holidays specified in clause 6 (a) fhould be ' paid ' holidays. An application was made by the employers to have the clause amended, on the ground that the recommendations of the Conciliation Council did not correctly embody the agreement arrived at. The Court was satisfied that a mistake had been made in the recommendations. The former award operated only in the Otago and Southland Industrial District, in which it was not customary to pay for holidays. The present award operated in the Northern Industrial District, as well as in the Otago and Southland Industrial District, and the Court had been informed that the practice in the Northern Industrial District had been to pay for all or some holidays. It was unusual to provide for payment for holidays in a manufacturing industry, except to the extent provided for by The Factories Act, 1921-22, but the Court, in this case, considered that, ih the exceptional circumstances existing, it should provide for payment to all workers for the six holidays specified in section 35 of The Factories Act, 1921-22. It was to be clearly understood that the Court was not establishing a precedent, but had been actuated by considerations arising from the conflict of customs in the two districts concerned.

Member Expresses Dissent. Mr. W. Scott, the employers' representative, records his dissent in the following terms: —" I cannot agree to any departure from an age-long established principle, as has been done in this case. In all the manufacturing trades wages* have never been paid for holidays, under the awards of the Court, if no work was done on those days, excepting the six statutory holidays as prescribed for women 'and bovs under The Factories Act. To depart from the principle is to add a further tax on our already overburdened industries, many of which cannot now compete witn the imported article manufactured under vastly different conditions to those existing in New Zealand."