TO REMOVE ANOMALIES

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1937, Page 9

TO REMOVE ANOMALIES

LEGISLATIVE ACT APPROVED. variety of clerical ' work . . Agreement with the opinion that the Government could not' cbnsistently ,do otherwise than pass legislation to validate clerical workers' unions. arid straifthten • out cdmplications. that have arisen in otKer callings as the result of ,the Appeal Court's decision was expressed- at ' New Plyiiiouth . .yesterday . Several-men who disagreed strongly with the Government's whole policy of compulsory unionism considered it could not permit that ' policy to fail because the existing law was not so framed. There was not, however, by any nieans unanimity that an all-embracing clerical union was desirable. It was pointed out that there were many branches of .clerical work with . widely varying conditions and it .was contended by opponents of the big union that no single award could adequately cover ; all sections, many of which cbuid not eyen be represented in the Conciliation Council. One feature of the , present .; law vyas that clerks employed in factories came under the provisions of the Factories Act, and that clerks worldng in shops were assistants under the Shops and Offices Act. Inquiries made at Auckland, showed that there were many anomalies relating to awards covering occupations spread over various industries. There was a storemen. and packers' award in which the hours of work stipulated were those in the industry to Which workers were attached. For example, in warehouses the, weekly hours were 42 and in factories they were 40. Yet storemen and packers in , shops were included in . the retail shop assistants' award. In the award .covering drivers, . the. weekly hours were those in the industry in which a driver Was employed. Carpenters were under a general award, and rightly so, said one man. Carpentry ,was a skilled trade, and a carpenter would utilise the skill he had acquired in his apprenticeship whether he had to carry out his trade in a f actory or a shop. On the other hand there was no such things as a skilled clerk in the general sense. • A law clerk would have no knowledge of the work of a bank clerk, or a stock agent's clerk would not be able to take over the duties of a shipping clerk or an insurance clerk or a railway clerk without training. Most industries had particular clerical requirements, which were in compartments, so to speak, and a clerk could be skilled as a clerk only in the particular compartment in which he had been trained and in which he had experience, Quite rightly the court had decided that in 'the circumstances clerical work was not a separate industry.