MINIMUM WAGES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22694, 5 April 1937, Page 11

MINIMUM WAGES

FACTORIES ACT SCALE APPRENTICE CONTRACTS LEGAL DISCRIMINATION TEST CASE JUDGMENT The confusion regarding the application of last year's legislation to apprentices has been partly resolved by the judgment of the Arbitration Court, of which a telegraphed summary was published on Saturday. The Court has also given an interpretation of the minimum wages clause in the Factories Amendment Act. By the Court's judgment, the full text of which is now available, the position in regard to apprenticeship contracts has been defined as follows: (1) Contracts made prior to July 1, 1936, are not subject to the Factories Amendment Act, 1936. Wages payable to the apprentices concerned are those prescribed by the relative apprenticeship orders, subject to the provisions of the Finance Act, by which rates of wages current in 1931 were restored.

(2) Contracts made after July 1, 1936, are subject to the Factories Amendment Act, 1936. Wages payable to the apprentices concerned are those prescribed by the relative apprenticeship orders, subject to the provisions of the Finance Act, but the scale of fixed by each order must be modified to comply with the provisions of the Factories Act, which requires an increase of 4s in the weekly wage every half-year until the end of the third year, and a wage not less than £2 a week thereafter. The Court has decided that the rates of wages in a contract of apprenticeship entered into after July 1, 1936, are "subject to the halfyearly increments as provided by section 12 of the Factories Amendment Act, 1936."

Protracted Proceedings The application for an interpretation of the law was nominally in respect of the Wellington furniture trade apprenticeship order, but the proceedings were in the nature of a test case affecting apprenticeship orders generally. Written submissions were made by the parties last November, but after perusing the papers, the Court decided to hear other interested parties, and a hearing was given in open Court in Wellington on February 17. Messrs. T. 0. Bishop and W. J. Mountjoy appeared for the employers and Messrs. F. J. Foote, J. Ferguson and F. Cornwell for the workers concerned and for various union organisations. The judgment states that the substantial question to be decided is whether apprenticeship orders or contracts are to be read subject to the provisions of the Factories Amendment Act, 1936. "We can find nothing in the Factories Amendment Act, 1936," the Court says, "to suggest that apprenticeship orders validly made in pursuance of the Apprentices Act, 1923, or contracts of apprenticeship duly entered into thereunder, prior to the coming into force of such first-men-tioned Act, are to be read subject to the provisions of such Act. . . . The inference (from section 19) is that such orders and such contracts were not intended to be disturbed by that Act." The Court therefore decided that apprenticeship orders and contracts entered into prior to July 1, 1936, the date of the coming into operation of the Factories Amendment Act, 1936, are not affected by the provisions of that Act. Clause in Apprenticeship Orders The Court considers that contracts made after July 1, 1936, would also not be affected but for a clause in the apprenticeship order under consideration that the provisions of an apprenticeship contract "shall not contravene the provisions of any Act relating to the employment of boys or youths." The Court remarks that the Factories Amendment Act, 1936, contains provisions "relating to the employment of boys and youths," and if an apprenticeship contract made after the coming into force of that Act were to fix a scale of wages lower than those fixed in such Act, the contract would "contravene the provisions" of that Act. The Court therefore decided that an apprenticeship contract made after July 1, 1936, must provide a scale of wages not less than that fixed by the Factories Amendment Act, 1936. Minimum Wages Clause The case presented on behalf of the employers by Mr. Bishop included submissions regarding section 12 of the Factories Amendment Act, generallv known as the minimum wages clause. This section amends section 32 of the 1921-22 Act, by requiring a minimum wage of 15s a week instead of 10s, and half-yearly increments of 4s instead of annual increments of ss. The meaning of the 1921-22 section was in dispute for many years and was settled by a judgment of the Appeal Court in Ballantvne's case in 1934. That Court unanimously decided that the law fixed minimum wages of 10s for the first year, ]ss for the second, 20s for the third, 25s for the fourth and 30s for the fifth year, and that the requirements of the law were satisfied if wages at not less than the appropriate rate for each period were paid. Mr. Bishop submitted that the effect of the 1936 section is identical: that it prescribes minimum wages of los for the first six months, 19s for the second six months. 23s for the third six months and so on. He contended that the phrase "on the agreed rate" in the provision regarding half-yearly increments is mere surplusage and should be disregarded. Half-Yearly Increments

"It was submitted by Mr. Bishop," says the judgment, "that as the 1921-22 and the 1936 sections are identical in construction and punctuation, and the original preamble has not been altered, the Legislature must he presumed to have acquiesced in tho opinion of tjio Court of Appeal in Ballantyne's case and that the intention was merely to fix a minimum wage of 15s a -week, with increments of four shillings every six months, until the end of the third year of employment and thereafter not less than £2 a week. It was not intended to provide, he contended, that every person in a factory should receive halfyearly increments during the first three years of employment, irrespective of the wages agreed on with the employer. "With these propositions wo find ourselves unable to agree. We think that the addition in the amended seclion of the words 'on the agreed rate' requires that the half-yearly increment? provided for therein shall be based and paid on the rate agreed upon and not on the minimum rate."