ARBITRATION COURT.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1838, 5 January 1920, Page 8

ARBITRATION COURT.

APPLICATIONS REFUSED. His Honour Mr Justice Stringer, in the Arbitration Court, has refused to amend the provisions regarding overtime in the respective awards of the Canterbury Bange Workers, MotorMechanics, Engineers, Metal Workers' Assistants, Tinsmiths and Sheet Metal Workers, Electrical Workers, and District Boilermakers. An application was made by the respective unions to amend the several awards by deleting the existing provision in each award as to the payment of overtime, and to substitute the words, "All time worked shall be computed on the full time raste.'' The common ground of the applications was the dissatisfaction at the reduction of the rate of overtime to the flat rate, while the cost of living was still increasing. In the opinion of the Court, the ground stated in the applications did not come within the provisions of the Act under which they were made. The Court had already fixed basic wages for the workers concerned, and, in addition, had granted bonuses which compensated for the increased cost of living, and which would be added to from time to time in conformity with any further increase in the cost of living. The rates fixed for overtime were quite independent of the rise and fall in the cost of living. The computation of the payment for overtime was intended by the Court, as explained in its original pronouncement on this subject, to be made exclusively of the bonuses* 4