SHOULD FORM UNION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19045, 19 June 1936, Page 5

SHOULD FORM UNION

DOMESTIC SERVANTS

ADVICE OF .MINISTER (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this clay. Since the clause dealing with workers not employed for the pecuniary gain of employers had been deleted from the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Bill, provision would have to bo made in some other Act to safeguard the wages and conditions of domestic servants and others eliminated, said the Minister of Labour, the Hon. H. T. Armstrong, in an interview yesterday. "I am not in a position to say what form this legislation will take, hut I have been discussing it for some time with my colleagues and with the officers of the Department of Labour," said the Minister. "Incidentally there never has been anything in the law of the country to prevent domestic servants from forming! unions, but probably if they had formed unions and had applied for awards, th% fact they were not employed for pecuniary gain would have ruled them out.

For certain rensons, however, it has not been considered advisable, in the meantime, to bring domestic servants and others into the scope of the legislation, but I can say that it would no doubt he to the decided advantage of domestic servants to form a union, and it would he even more helpful to the Government than otherwise for them to do so. We do not intend to discourage them in doing that."