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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 16

With regard to shop assistants, Miss Hawthorne, Inspector of Factories, in her annual report, remarks: —“A question I am often met with is, why women shop assistants should have to work fifty-two hours per week as against forty-five worked by factory workers of the same sex, and it is a question I have no reply to. as my own opinion is that a shop assistant who has to stand all day, very often in cold,?, draughty shops, requires the short hours as much as the factory workers, who are sitting in clean, well-lighted, and well-ventilated workrooms. And, further, with regard to assistants who are employed in refreshment-rooms, there should be some stipulated time for starting and leaving business. As the act stands at present, an employer can have his workers back to business at 2 o’clock in the morning if he wishes to do so.