ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD SLAVERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22519, 13 March 1935, Page 5

ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD SLAVERY

TO THE EDITOK Sir, —My object in writing is to correct a wrong impression which may have been created by the heading " The Conciliation and Arbitration Act," under which in your issue of yesterday you published extracts from a letter addressed to the Prime Minister by the secretary of the Otago and Southland Amalgamated Society of Shop Assistants' Industrial Union of Workers. It is not my intention to enter into any discussion as to the merits of the cases mentioned. If there has been a breach of the law. it is one which, I hope, will be dealt with by the Labour Department. My point is that the position which is said to have arisen is not due to the amending of the Industrial Concliation and Arbitration Act, as the reader not fully informed might be led to believe. Workers in dairy shops, and also in many other classes of retail trades, never have been provided for by an award of the Arbitration Court, and it is quite misleading to , attempt to convey the impression, as the statement of the Shop Assistants' Union does, that by reason of the amendment of the Act workers in these establishments have been deprived of the protection of an award. If this statement is correct as to the hours worked by and the wages paid to a girl of 16 years, and if it is also true that the Labour Department can apply no remedy, my association would be the first to welcome such an alteration in the Shops and Offices Act as would prevent the continuance of such a practice.—l am, etc., A. S. Cookson, Secretary Otngo Employeers' Association.