FACTORIES ACT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8994, 2 December 1907, Page 3

FACTORIES ACT.

Printed copies of the Factories Act Amendment Act, rushed through in the last days of the- session, are now available. The Act contains one clause which, it is said, would have been very strongly opposed on behalf of employers, if the confusion of its passage at the eleventh hour of Parliament had not made resistance quite impracticable. This clause states that—"Every person who is employed in any capacity in a factory shall be entitled to receive from the occupier such payment for his work as is agreed on, being not less than five shillings a week for the first year of employment in the trade, eight shiljings a week for the second year, eleven shillings a week for the third year, and so on by additions of three shillings a week for each year of employment in the same trade until a wage of twenty shillings a week is reached, and there..'lifter not less than a wage of twenty ? jilir.gs a week." In the former ?PI payment was provided for "at the rate of" five shillings, eight shillings, and so forth a week. The omission of four little words means that.in future factory workers who may only be employed for two days a week must receive a full week's wages. This presses hard on employers in tailoring, bootmaking, and other businesses which are necessarily subject to slack seasons and rushes, for in times of little work they must pay for days when there is no employment, and in the busy season they 'must pay extra over-time rates, as hitherto. In some cases it will doubtless be possible to organise the work; that there will be a minimum of broken weeks, but other businesses are scarcely capable of this control.