HOLIDAY BILL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 12, 5 October 1945, Page 3

HOLIDAY BILL

GENERALLY IN AGREEMENT MR SULLIVAN'S OBSERVATIONS

"We on this side of the House, concur generally with the principles of the amendments -embodied in the Bill," declared Mr W. Sullivan (National, Bay of Plenty) speaking on the sc.cond reading of the Annual Holidays Amendment Bill, which provides that an employer must give an employee at least seven days' notice of the date on which he is to commence, his annual holidajrs or part of them, and which also provides for the employee being paid for hi.s holidays before starting his leave. Mr Sullivan said he would like to mention one or two points and Avould suggest they be provided for. In country districts drovers were called upon to drive stock long distances and at a certain stage in the journey they hand, ed over to another set of drovers. Those drovers might be employed by companies situated some distance from their homes. The employers experienced difficulty in getting the men's holiday cards in order to affix holiday stamps, and Mr Sullivan ■said he would like to see an amendment to the Bill to allow employers to add one-twenty-fifth to the men's pay instead of affixing stamps on holiday cards. The same thing applied in the case of men engaged in the back country shearing or fencing for a week or two. Their employers might lie -10 or o(> miles: from a post office, and with the present difficulty in connection with tyres and petrol, they were not able to get into town to purchase stamps to affix to the cards. Few men could afford to carry £2 or £3 worth of stamps, and Mr Sullivan said the addition of one-twenty-fifth to the pay would cover the difficulty.