WAGES ON FARMS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22543, 7 October 1936, Page 12

WAGES ON FARMS

The Minister of Labour has made a statement clearing up at least one of the perplexities caused by the Agricultural Workers Act. He has assured farmers employing married couples that both husband and wife will not have to be paid the statutory minimum rates unless the wife is engaged wholly on farm work. Adjustments can be made according to circumstances where she "merely assists for brief periods each day in farm work"—obviously meaning where she helps in the milking shed night and morning. This is a sensible and reasonable way of meeting what threatened to be a very awkward situation for some dairy farmers and their employees. To that extent it is satisfactory, but it is an interpretation of the Act that no court of law would conceivably give. The discretion to decide in this way is simply not to be found in the law. The Minister can make this concession by instructing his inspectors not to take action against farmers so long as they observe the law according to his way of interpreting it. He may be able to regularise the position by Order-in-Council, for his power to issue regulations is fairly wide. Possibly the result is what matters most, but it is something new and startling to have an Act, framed in.a large and comprehensive way, put on the Statute Book, and then to have the Minister decide when and how its provisions are to apply. It is one of the most marked examples of hasty legislation the country has seen for a very long time. The law was made without any proper account being taken of the many different sets of circumstances it would have to cover. Consequently thq Minister has to take on his own shoulders the responsibility of saying how far it shall be applied.