A Holiday Anomaly

Southland Times, Issue 23379, 10 December 1937, Page 4

A Holiday Anomaly

As the result of a judgment of the Arbitration Court, upholding a magisterial decision, employers of labour under the Factories Act have found themselves in an extraordinary position with regard to payment for the statutory holidays at Christmas and New Year. An account of the Court’s judgment was printed in The Southland Times yesterday. At the end of last year a Wellington manufacturing firm was working a five-day, 40-hour week. Christmas Day fell on a Friday and Boxing Day on a Saturday. The firm worked its employees for four days in that week and paid them a full week’s wages. As there was ordinarily no work on a Saturday, the firm made no payment for this day, which was Boxing Day. In the Factories Act, however, Boxing Day is listed as one of the holidays on which every person employed in a factory shall be allowed a holiday at his normal rate of pay; and it was on account of this provision that a test case was taken against the firm. The decision of the Magistrate, Mr J. H. Luxford, was against the firm, and the Arbitration Court, to which appeal was made, upheld him. The judgment of the Court was that “the provisions of the award and the Factories Act and its amendments are mandatory and entitle workers to payment for any of the prescribed holidays, irrespective of the hours they have worked in any week prior to the holiday.” But having delivered this judgment Mr Justice O’Regan made it clear that in his opinion this effect of the legislation was not intended by Parliament. “Doubtless,” he added, “this result was not within the contemplation of the legislature or of the parties to the award. The Court, however, is not free to deviate from the language employed.” The intention of Parliament was obviously to assure each worker a full, normal week’s pay without deduction for statutory holidays. That was, in fact, the interpretation placed on the Act by the Labour Department in a ruling given before the case was taken to Court, as follows:

When the holiday occurs on a Saturday the department does not insist on payment being made to regular hands whose ordinary employment is from Monday to Friday in each week. . So long as in each week the worker receives his full week’s wages, we consider the Act has been complied with, and that it is not necessary to pay him an extra day’s wages merely by reason of the fact that the holiday in that particular instance, as for example Boxing Day last, occurs on a Saturday. There seems every reason why the faulty drafting of this provision of the law should at once be corrected. Parliament has not yet risen, and it is possible that a last-minute amendment may be put through all stages today. Otherwise, over the Christmas and New Year holiday periods this year many employers will be called upon to pay their staffs three full days’ wages in addition to the ordinary two weeks’ wages. ,