CHEMICAL MANURE WORKERS.

Southland Times, Issue 23646, 22 October 1938, Page 7

CHEMICAL MANURE WORKERS.

MAIN PROVISIONS OF NEW AWARD An award covering Otago and Southland chemical manure and acid workers has been issued by the Arbitration Court. It provides for a 40-hour week of five days for day workers and a 40-hour week between midnight on Sunday and noon oh Saturday for shift workers. The following minimum hourly rates of wages have been fixed. —Day workers, 2/4J; chambermen, 2/6|; shift workers, 2/SJ; men discharging shipments of phosphate rock, 2/6;-men discharging shipments of sulphur or guano, 2/7J; men working on super bank, 2/7|; men making and handling super-slag or basic slag mixture, either loose or in bags, 2/6. , / Men required to enter sulphur burners to clean them are to be paid time and a-half rates while so employed, the minimum payment to be for two hours. Men cleaning out acid chambers or employed in repairing or demolishing acid chambers, towers or combustion chambers where it becomes necessary to handle material saturated with acid, must be paid 3d an hour extra while so employed. Men placed in charge of five or more other men are to be paid lid an hour extra wmle so employed. The man in charge of a hill department or the man in charge of a manufacturing department must be paid 2d an hour extra. An interval of 10 minutes for “smoko” is to be allowed morning and afternoon each day when unloading guano, rock or sulphur. In a dissenting opinion Mr A. L Monteith, the workers’ assessor, stated that workers secured a minimum wage of 2/3 an hour, while the Court was giving only the 1931 rates (in this case 1/10J, plus the adjustment Er the 40hour week). The work had to be performed by the majority of workers in lime, super and slag dust and he dissented because the wage, rates did not take into consideration the abovementioned difference secured by agreement with the employers. To give only a halfpenny over the minimum standard rate was, in his opinion, quite inadequate for this work.