SHOPS AND OFFICES.

Waipa Post, Volume XX, Issue 1177, 3 December 1921, Page 2

SHOPS AND OFFICES.

AMENDING AND CONSOLIDATING BILL.

STATUTORY MINIMUM WAGE,

The Shops and Offices Amendment Bill is very largely a consolidation of the existing legislation. A large number of verbal amendments and a few machinery clauses are included. In addition there are several fresh provisions.

More latitude in the way of late nights in Easter week is to be given in future. It is provided that where a shop is closed for the whole of Good Friday, Easter Saturday, and Easter Monday, and the assistants are not employed on those days, the shopkeeper may keep his shop open, and employ assistants until nine o’clock on the evenings of the Wednesday and Thursday immediately preceding Good Friday.

Another clause provides a statutory minimum wage for shop assistants, is laid down that the minimum rates for assistants shall be not less than ten shippings a week, with annual increments of five shillings a week until thirty shillings a week is reached, after which the wage shall be not less than thirty shillings. The fixing of the statutory half holiday in the case of a borough or a town district amalgamatnig with a combined district is arranged. It is provided that in the case of such an amalgamation the statutory closing day of the combined district shall, until altered in accordance with the law, apply to the whole of that combined district, thus operating in the newly joined area.

A certain extension is made to the cases in which a magistrate may, in accordance with the amendment of the March session this l year, permit a shop to be kept open after the evening closing time fixed by the Act of last yeaT. The magistrate may make an order in this direction, in addition to the cases where only the owner and his family are employed, and give the same concessions to a shop employing one assistant, if he is satisfied that owing to ill health or other disability the owner or his family cannot conduct the business.