BUILDERS WARNED

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLI, Issue 20441, 11 June 1936, Page 3

BUILDERS WARNED

EMPLOYMENT OF BOYS CASE DISMISSED The case would serve as a warning to builders that they could not employ boys, who were not apprenticed, to do carpenters’ work, said Mr C. R. Orr-Walker, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday, when he dismissed as trivial an action by the Inspector of Awards (Mr McKessar) for a penalty of £lO against Albert Edward Evans for employing a youth, Arthur Eaton, and failing to pay him award wages. Mr A. D. Mcßae appeared for defendant. Mr McKessar gave evidence that on a visit to a job being done by Evans at Kingsdown he had found the boy erecting scaffolding, which was carpenters’ work. He had suggested to Evans that the boy should be appi’enticed but the defendant refused. The boy was receiving 15/- a week, the award rate being 2/- an hour for carpenters. Arthur Eaton said he did not do any carpentering work but was employed to do odd jobs, such as carrying up nails to the men and sweeping out floors. On the Kingsdown job he had nailed a crossbeam to an upright on the scaffolding without instructions from Evans and only as an obligement to the carpenters. The Magistrate remarked that he had no technical knowledge of what was carpenters* work and what was not, and it seemed a fine line to draw. Apart from his action in nailing the beam on the scaffolding, there was no evidence that the boy had done anything which could be called carpenters’ work. The work he had done at Kingsdown he had done voluntarily and without instructions from his employer, and he would dismiss the case as trivial. The Magistrate pointed out that it had been held in the Arbitration Court that an employer could be held liable for a breach even if it were committed without his knowledge, but then it was only a question of fixing a penalty and in this case it was trivial.