SHOPS AND OFFICES BILL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3767, 10 June 1936, Page 5

SHOPS AND OFFICES BILL

THE EMPLOYERS’ POSITION. MR BROADFOOT’S APPEAL. An appeal to the Minister of Labour to make the provisions of the Shops and Offices Bill a little better as far as the employers’ side was concerned was made by Mr W. J. Broadfoot, M'.P. for Waitomo, when speaking on the Bill in the House of Representatives. In the country, he said, there were small broadinghouses run by a man, his wife, and perhaps a staff of two or three. The shortening of hours and the increasing of wages would moan serious difficulty for those people. Boardinghouses of that class were not like hotels in that the latter had an earning capacity in another avenue. The Minister might extend some consideration to people running those small boardinghouses because, in the main, they gave their employees a fairly square deal. Dealing with the Saturday halfholiday, Mr Broadfoot said that many industries could, and did close down on the Saturday because it did not pay to start up the machinery for a four hours’ day, but in the country areas Saturday was a good shopping day, and he did not thing it would be advisable to close down on Saturday morning there. The Minister: This Bill is not closing them down. Mr Broadfoot: No, but we are getting a bit scared. Mr Broadfoot said that he thought that* it was right to eliminate night work for females and young people as far as possible. If a business was worth running for late hours, surely the correct wages should be paid. With respect to overtime, he thought that the Minister, by bringing up the question of heavy overitme, hoped to create jobs for other people. That might not be so, but it must be remembered thajt thiere were rush periods in every business where another hand could not be. taken on where expert knowledge was required. If it could be proved that a man was persistently working his people overtime, then he should be checked, and if room could be made for other people, so much the better. “One can quite realise that there is an inclination Ito take a one-sided View of the thing,” said Mr Broadfoot, “but the Minister is in a judicial position where he has to take notice of both sides, and I hope he will work on those lines.”