WORK DONE ON HOLIDAYS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22515, 24 September 1938, Page 15

WORK DONE ON HOLIDAYS

♦ Firm’s Appeal Against Decision JUDGMENT RESERVED BY APPEAL COURT (PRESS ASSOCIATIOM TELEGRAM.) WELLINGTON, September 23. The Court of Appeal continued today the hearing of the case, A. and T. Burt, Ltd., v. Blair. The case is an appeal from the decision of the Magistrate’s Court in Auckland in an industrial case, the appeal having been removed from the Supreme Court in order to obtain an authoritative decision. Blair, who was employed by A. and T. Burt, Ltd., successfully sued the firm for £3, being wages claimed for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, 1937, ant' for New Year’s Day, 1938. These days fell on Saturday, Sunday, and Saturday respectively, and as Blair worked a five-day week A. and T. Burt, Ltd., refused to pay for these days, considering that the obligation under the Factories Act to pay wages for holidays operated only if holidays fell during the working week. The Magistrate, holding himself bound by a decision of the Arbitration Court, gave judgment for Blair. Messrs A, and T. Burt, Ltd., are appealing from this judgment. Mr Stevenson, for A. and T. Burt, Ltd., argued that according to statute the occupier of a factory shall allow certain holidays, and he quoted a case in which the words of an award required certain holidays to be recognised and paid for (i.e., a stronger obligation than in the statute), and it was held by the Arbitration Court that the employer was not required to pay wages for Anzac Day falling on a Sunday. He further submitted that in the majority of factories, in accordance with awards, wages were not paid for statutory holidays falling on nonworking days, and that the words of the Factories Act clearly showed that the Legislature intended to make this rule universal. If it were otherwise, workers would receive, when a holiday fell on a non-working day, a bonus payment in excess of their ordinary weekly wage. Mr Cooke contended for respondent that a holiday in the statute meant “a day upon which work does not take place,” and thus i ncluded days ordinarily non-working days as well as days specifically declared holidays; and that the word “allow” applied to holidays meant to “treat or count such days as holidays for the purposes of the act even if such days would not otherwise be working days." Therefore the statute meant that such holidays must be paid for. Decision was reserved.