WELLINGTON TAXIS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19550, 4 February 1938, Page 14

WELLINGTON TAXIS

REORGANISATION PLANNED NEW COMPANY FORMED MOST DRIVERS JOIN UP (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, last night. The complete reorganisation of the taxi industry in Wellington is foreshadowed, following on the formation and registration last month of the Wellington Co-operative Taxi Ownerdrivers’ Association, Limited. Applications for shares by ownerdrivers were considered a't a meeting of the interim directors held this week, when it was found that approximately 70 per .cent of the taxi-drivers working from stands in and around the efty and suburbs had applied to link up with the movement. It is expected that once the company becomes firmly established, the remainder of such taxi-drivers in Wellington will join up, provision having been made for this eventuality. The formation of the company is the direct outcome of recommendations of a commission set up by the Government to inquire into the taxi industry. The objects of the company are twofold —the elimination of anomalies that have made the taxi industry uneconomic, thereby placing it on a vastly improved basis, and as a consequence the provision of a more efficient service to the public. Conditions that ljave made taxi-driving in the past a hand-to-mouth existence for many engaged in it, were the overlapping of services and telephone systems, intensive competition, and the existence of the commission system.

It is proposed to apply for the revision of the award previously in existence. A minimum wage of £4 12s fid will be sought with a 60-hour week, consisting of six days of 10 hours for taxi-drivers, while steps will be taken to bring the operators under the clerical award which provides for a 40-hour week.