CLAIM FOR WAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 225, 23 September 1929, Page 7

CLAIM FOR WAGES.

APPRENTICE SUES PLUMBER, JUDGMENT FOR DEFENDANT. A judgment by Mr. E. C. Cutten, S.M., was entered at the Magistrate's Court to-day in a case in which T. \Y. Munro (Mr. Jack), sued W. Daubeney, to recover £47 12/3 claimed to be wages clue for services rendered. Plaintiff was a boy 10 years of age, and the defendant, a plumber, appeared in person. The boy's father approached Mr. Daubeney and asked defendant to employ his son. Defendant agreed to take the boy and pay him £1 per week and one shilling per hour for any time worked on Saturday afternoons. The boy started work, on April 2 last, and continued in the defendant's employment until June 20. After the boy had been some little time with the defendant, application was made to have him apprenticed, but a reply was received that the quota wan full, and he could not for the present bo apprenticed. The defendant trusting that the position would alter and the apprenticeship might be authorised, kept the boy on until June 20, when the employment was terminated. Subsequent to this the defendant was sued by the Registrar of Apprentices for a penalty on the ground that he had employed an apprentice and had failed to submit a contract of apprenticeship within the prescribed time, and judgment was given against him. This was now followed by the present action claiming a sum making up the difference between the wages paid to the boy and full journeyman plumber's wages' at the rate of 2/3 per hour for the period worked. The magistrate said he did not think the facts "would justify a finding that the plaintiff was doing a material part of the highly skilled work of a journeyman plumber. The fact that he plaintiff did cut threads in water pipes may have rendered the defendant liable to a penalty, for though anyone could do suh work, it ™s part of the work o a plumber's apprentice but do ng .Icl work-' occasionally would not, even for he inn-pose of ascertaining the plaintiff s Sit to wages under the award, give him the status of a plumber. Judgment was for the defendant.