WEEK OF FIVE DAYS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19140, 8 October 1936, Page 4

WEEK OF FIVE DAYS

COMMON OBJECTIVE PROPOSAL OF UNIONS (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. An effort to institute a common fiveday working week in New Zealand is reported. Tlie proposal, originating in Auckland and intended to spread throughout the Dominion, has as its main object the refusal to patronise shops on Saturday mornings.

Union secretaries in the city, it is stated., intend to prepare circulars for distribution among their members, calling upon them to see that their household shopping is done on Fridays. There is said to have been preliminary discussions already among the union secretaries.

A suggestion is that the move is the outcome of recent complaints that, in certain industries where ! the 40-hour week could properly be recognised, men were obliged to '.work on Saturdays when there was no obvious necessity for it. It is suggested also that certain unions are aggrieved that they have not received the benefit of an Arbitration Court award granting them the 40-hour week, and they see in the proposal to discipline shops an opportunity of levelling the differences between working conditions among unionists.

The proposal apparently is to circularise every unionist in Auckland and then to organise a mass meeting! of workers to affirm the policy. Meanwhile, the Trades and Labour Council and the Alliance of Labour are to be advised and their support solicited. Every union in the country is to be kept posted on the subject, and with the backing of the Council and the Alliance, Auckland ' unionists are sanguine of carrying their purpose into effect.