HIGHER PAY CLAIMS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19893, 22 March 1939, Page 14

HIGHER PAY CLAIMS

LABOURERS' AWARD RISES NOT JUSTIFIED EMPLOYERS' VIEWS (I'm- Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The hearing by the Court of Arbitration of an application for a new Dominion award to cover builders and general labourers was continued yesterday when the case for the applicant union was completed and the case for the employers was partially finished. Eieven witnesses were called for the union and three witnesses gave evidence for the employers. The hearing was concluded yesterday, when the remaining three witnesses for the employers gave evidence, following which the carpenters and joiners' dispute was commenced. Dealing with the .submissions made by Mr. P. M. Butler, advocate for the applicant union, Mr. W. J. Mountjoy, for the employers, contended the union was seeking an unnecessary classification of workers by claiming that new types of work were ever, increasing, due to the development of i new methods. In this schedule Mr. Butler sought 2d an hour above the minimum rate for wheeling barrows on raised platforms and scaffolds. 2d an hour extra for crusher feeders, and an increase for men carrying materials 'up a height greater than (ift. Mr. Mountjoy said this was work that had been performed by labourers on the |minimum wage for years. The classifications appeared to be merely an attempt to secure increases in wages. | The Australian labourers' awards were quoted by Mr. Mountjoy to show that the New Zealand v/n'ker was far better off under the current labourers' award. He opposed a weekly rate for -builders' labourers, and cited the Public Works Department and others 'whose labourers were paid on an hourly basis. To introduce weekly 'rates" of ' pay for building trade : labourers in New Zealand, with its 'climatic conditions, would result in a 'serious and unwarranted increase in the cost of production, claimed Mr. 'Mountjoy, who urged that the court's standard" rate pronouncement of 1937 should be the wages fixed for workers. He also asked that the term of the award should be not less than two years.