NO BOXING DAY PAY

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLXI, Issue 15233, 24 December 1942, Page 4

NO BOXING DAY PAY

PROVISIONS OE AWARDS. Boxing Day this year will merge with the Saturday holiday for industries working a live-day week and there will not therefore be any claim on employers for wages on account of that holiday. When a similar position last arose five years ago, with Christinas' Day and New Year’s Day on Saturdays, the resulting dispute was settled by the Court of Appeal. Every person employed in industry under the Factories Act during the fortnight preceding is entitled to each of the. holidays, and wages will be payable for Christmas Day and New Year's Day, but not for Boxing Day. Where essential undertakings close over the holidays, employees engaged on a w eekly basis are entitled to their full wage and hourly workers to the minimum wage as prescribed in the Minimum Weekly Wage Order. This does not apply to apprentices, who should receive the amount prescribed in their contracts. Under the Retail Shop Assistants’ Award no payment in addition to the usual weekly wage is payable on account of any holiday on a day not ordinarily a working day unless work is actually performed on that day. Additional rates for Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New' Year’s Day are payable to tearoom and restaurant workers. The customary closing for 10 days will be observed by most Wellington factories, some resuming work on Monday, January 4, and others on Tuesday. It is expected that this break will be generally used for the overhaul of machinery liecause many factories, which in the past have had a spare unit to simplify inspection and repairs, aie now working to their utmost capacity.

Under the Factories Act, occupiers of factories are required to allow eight days’ holiday at ordinary rates of pay in each year and in 1937 claims were made by workers that as Christmas Day and New Year’s Oay fell outside the five-day working week, they were entitled to full wages for those days in addition to* full weekly wage. Cla&ms for such wages were upheld in test cases brought before a magistrate and th Court of Arbitration before the legal position was clarified. One action went as far as the Court of Appeal, which unanimously decided that theCourt of Arbitration had wrongly interpreted the statutory provision, and thus allowed the appeal from the magistrate’s decision. What the Legislature had in mind was simply that workers should not lose financially by reason of the holiday, said the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers) in the course of judgment. In other words, there should be no deduction from wages on account of the statutory holiday. It was necessary to assume that *‘allowed” holidays should fall on a working day, sijnee a declared holiday already belonged to the worker, and there was thus nothing for the employer to allow or give.