SUBURBAN SHOP HOURS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19952, 20 November 1926, Page 19

SUBURBAN SHOP HOURS.

GRANTING OF EXEMPTIONS. ARBITRATION COURT CONFUSED. (Special to Dailx Times.) AUCKLAND, November 19. “I wish to goodness an amendment would be made to the Shops and Ottices Act taking away responsibility of these exemptions from the Arbitration Court. How we are to understand the circumstances of every storekeeper in the country 1 do not know,’ said Mr Justice Frazer in the Arbitration Court this morning when applications for exemptions trom award hours were under review, it was to be hoped that the employers and the unions would come to an understanding and get the section repealed, continued his Honor. If they did, they would have his blessing. The responsibility might be shifted to the magistrates or someone else. As it was asked -to deal with application from Waipukurau and Maangatapuri, and all sorts of places that nobody ever heard of, the court under the present conditions could not deal w'ith the thing properly. It could only tinker with it. In many cases the court was faced with the difficulty that if the small suburban shopkeepers were forced to observe the award closing hours they would be deprived of a lot of business, because the bulk of their customers worked in the city. If these suburban shops closed at the same hour as the city shops it would mean that people returning from work would be unable to make their purchases in the suburbs, and would be compelled to do their shopping in. the city. Mr VV. E. Sill, of the Butchers Union, who was opposing an application for exemption made by a cooked meat shop proprietor, observed that a shopkeeper in the suburbs need not stay there. He could go to work (or the big man and get the award wage. “That may sound all very well, but I am surprised to hear that you should say that a man should be compelled to remain a what-do-you-call-it—a wage slave—-all his life, and be prevented from launching out on his own,” retorted his Honor. The fact was that the majority of people who worked in the city could not get back to their homes till nearly 6 p.m., and to make the shopkeeper close at 5.30 was to make these people shop in the city. Mr Justice Frazer went on to say that the policy of the court was to enable the suburban shopkeeper to retain his fcwn proper business, without encroaching on business of others. “What is required is a system of zone with the same closing hour for all shops in' each zone,” said his Honor. “There could be a central city zone with the hour fixed at 5.30, a suburban zone, with the shops closing at, say, 6 o’clock; and an outer, or country, zone, in which the shops could close at any old hour they chose.