NO COMPLAINTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 169, 20 July 1942, Page 4

NO COMPLAINTS

WOMEN CONDUCTORS QUESTION OF WAGE RATES Asked whether after a month's experience the women conductors of the Auckland trams were fulfilling expectations from the union point of view, Mr. F. Hackett, secretary of the Auckland branch and national president of the New Zealand Tramways Union, stated in an interview this morning that no complaints had been received, either from the men or from the management. They were settling down nicely, and seemed to suffer no hardships by having to do shift work, and were definitely not expecting any favoured treatment as compared with the men. Asked whether it was true that the Industrial Emergency Council had recently been asked to define what wages should be paid to women conductors, Mr. Hackett stated that the Public Passenger Transport Association had recently been given such a hearing in Wellington, but, owing to the fact that no request was made to have any specific award amended, no judgment had been given. When the report of the proceedings was read at a meeting of Auckland tramwaymen recently, 100 per cent of the women conductors then on the job were present, and they were somewhat indignant. "That this meeting of tramwaymen views with apprehension the attempts made by the Public Passenger Transport Association to pay our women comrades less wages than men, and pledges itself to support them to the utmost in order to ensure equal pay for equal work," was the resolution which was passed unanimously.

In Wellington the women conductors were due to receive their first week's wages on Thursday, July 9, and on Wednesday afternoon it was still a matter of conjecture what hourly rate was to be paid, said Mr. Hackett. However, on Wednesday evening it was agreed that they be paid on an equal basis.

Wellington and Auckland were the only centres that had so far engaged women conductors, and it would be safe to say that the question of equal pay for equal work was now so firmly established that no citation would be made to have any awards amended, concluded Mr. Hackett.