EMPLOYEES’ CLAIM.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 492, 29 June 1932, Page 7

EMPLOYEES’ CLAIM.

Court Asked to Decide Two Issues. Further evidence was heard to-day by Mr H. A. Young, S.M., in the case in which twenty-nine employees of Messrs Duckworth, Turner and Company, boot manufacturers, are claiming wages allegedly flue f or three weeks when the factory was closed down. Another issue involved was whether or not the twenty-nine employees were dismissed about Christmas time, 1930, or merely stood down for three weeks. Dudley Venna Wilson, secretary of Duckworth, Turner and Company, said that when the girls were given notice it was not known whether or.not they would be re-engaged. It was known that they could not give the employees a compulsory holiday without paying them, so that was why the girls were put off. They had not wanted to put the girls off, but the position was that no work was available. It was realised ‘that when the factory opened there would be no guarantee that it would stay open. Termination of Contract.

Counsel for the defendant company said that the notice was an emphatic termination of a contract. “ If, in these difficult times,” continued counsel, “ an employer cannot close down a factory without the risk of a claim for wages by his employees, it represents the high watermark of trades hall tyranny.”

Counsel for plaintiffs submitted that the law was laid down by Mr Justice Frazer’s latest interpretation. The findings of the Arbitration Court were binding on all Courts of ‘the land. Judgment was reserved.