WOMEN’S DIVISION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23858, 12 July 1939, Page 8

WOMEN’S DIVISION

OPENING OF CONFERENCE PRELIMINARY MEETINGS HELD (Special ro Daily Times) WELLINGTON. July 11. Although the annual conference of the Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union does not open until to-morrow, several preliminarv meetings have already been held. This morning the Bush Nurse and Housekeeper Auxiliary meeting was held in the Masonic Hall, with the Dominion president (Mrs J. -C. Wickham) in the chair. The hall was comfortably filled. A proposal to make a housekeeper free for a fortnight to mothers of four or more young children was lost. _ It was decided to ask the Farmers Union and Sheep Owners’ Federation to clarify the position regarding shearers and cooks, as at present any housekeeper employed at shearing time could be classed as such and the Women’s Division might be liable to pav award wages accordingly It was decided that housekeepers should not be sent to cases and may decline to go into homes where there is a non-certifiable disease such as whooping cough measles etc. A proposal that, as the Women’s Division housekeepers were performing a national service they should be exempt from paying taxes on their wages was lost, members feeling that their wages were adequate to meet the demands. Many of the rules of the Auxiliary were revised for incorporation in the hand book