BAKERS' AND PASTRYCOOKS' AWARD.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20488, 5 March 1932, Page 11

BAKERS' AND PASTRYCOOKS' AWARD.

TO THB EDITOR OF TH* PEE 33 . Sir,—As showing the need for some revision of Arbitration Court methods, tlte new Bakers' and Pastrycooks Award calls for attention. Wages are unaltered, but new conditions are brought in affecting overtime tinie of starting, and employment or junior labourers. Hitherto, a baker could work up to ten hours in any one day without overtime rate, providing the total weekly- hours did not exceed 40. This assisted smaller bakeries ana those who .had mixed bakeries, making both bread and cakes, with whom certain days were busier "than others. The new Award provides that . time worked in excess of eight hours is to be reckoned as overtime. The-hour or starting is 4 a.m., but hitherto on Saturdays and the day before holidays, the hour of starting could, be 3 a.m. This also applied to small country bakeries, antl those who bake bread for delivery before 8 a.m. These concessions are now struck out. Junior labourers could be employed hitherto, one to each bakehouse, thereafter one junior td_ each two adults. The new Award strikes out tins, and substitutes that junior labourers may be employed in proportion of not more than one to every two adult labourers. In the whole of Canterbury there are probably not more than three hakenouses which can employ two adult lab-: ourers, therefore scores of bakehouses in this province will not be able to emplov a. junior. Over New Zealand as a whole it is not overstating to say that probably 200 juniors will lose their jobs. ' The method of computing'overtime payment which has always _ hitherto obtained is now altered. It .is now replaced b.v a wonderful rigid method which will work entirely in favour of the' few large bakeries, and against the many smaller ones. Indeed the whole of the alterations, while not improving the position of the worker, favour the automatic bakeries, which are exoressly excluded from the operation of the overtime clause previously mentioned. ■ ■ I understand that this Award was fixed up in Wellington, and tho effect

of it will be increased unemployment of our youths, and accordingly in working costs for the majori y bakers at a time when there is urgent need for cost reduction.— lours, etc., COUNTRY BAKER. March -lib, 1932.