PAY AND HOURS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23121, 20 August 1938, Page 19

PAY AND HOURS

CASE FOE EMPLOYEES METAL WORKERS' DISPUTE SCOPE OF NEW AWARD Submissions on behalf of the employers concerned in a dispute with the Wellington Metal Workers' Assistants' Union over the terms of a new award were made in the Arbitration Court yesterday. Mr. Justice O'Regan presided, and with him were Mr. W. Cecil Prime and Mr. A. L. Monteith, lay members. The employers were represented by Mr. T. 0. Bishop, of Wellington, the Union Steam Shi]) Company, Limited, by Mr. K. A. Bclford, and the workers by Mr. F. I'. Walsh, of Wellington. Mr. Walsh presented tho workers' claims oil Wednesday. Mr. Bishop said that, although tho matters in dispute were not very numerous, they were of the utmost importance. Some of them really constituted tho foundation upon which tha whole award was based. Extent of Application The employers, said Mr. Bishop, asked that tho award should apply only to unskilled workers employed as general labourers in engineering and metal working shops, and to workers in such shops who ware employed as assistants to skilled workers, and should include blacksmiths' strikers and engineers, boiler makers, or moulders' assistants, but should not apply to workers employed in the measuring, cutting, bending, placing and shaping of steel for reinforced concrete. Such a definition conformed very closely to the definition in the 193(3 award, which the Court had enacted in preference to tho one in the former 1929 award, which was wider in its application.

It was desired that the hours for employees in freezing works should bo those fixed in the freezing workers' awards, Mr. Bishop said. Referring to the employees' claim for a paid annual holiday of a fortnight in addition to statutory holidays, Mr. Bishop said it would not bo practicable to have different sets of conditions applying to different classes of workers in the samo establishment. Metal workers' assistants must be governed by tho conditions of employment that governed the other workers in the metal trades. The Claims for Wages

It was probable that the extravagant rates of wages, ranging from 3s to 4s 3d an hour, claimed by the union, were put forward without any hope that they would be obtained, ho said. When a comprehensive Dominion metal trades' award was being discussed in conciliation council at Christchurch recently it was agreed that tho payment to tool makers and pattern makers, the highest skilled workers in the trade, should be 2s lid an hour, and that first-class tradesmen should receive 2s 9d. In the present case of assistant metal workers, the employers' offer was for a flat rate of 2s 4Jd an hour. After several witnesses had been heard, the sitting was adjourned until this morning.