‘Part-Time Workers Needed’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30975, 3 February 1966, Page 3

‘Part-Time Workers Needed’

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, Feb. 2. The need for parttime workers in the printing industry was emphasised by Mr R. E. Worts, general manager of C. M. Banks Ltd., and a past president of the Master Printers’ Federation, in evidence today when the hearing of the Printing Union’s claim for higher pay margins for skilled ’ workers continued in the Arbitration Court.

Mr Worts said the employers had asked the Court to incorporate their . counter proposals to permit the employment of part-time workers. Skilled workers were available and willing to be employed part-time if allowed. The members of the court.

Judge A. P. Blair and Messrs A. B. Grant and W. N. Hewitt were invited to visit three Wellington printing works to learn more about skills in the industry. Asked about a 1964 agreement which designated paste make-up as a compositor’s job, Mr Worts said the agreement was only temporary, to meet the needs of the “Nelson Evening Mail” which was involved in disputes over the operation of its new webb offset printing machine. He agreed with Mr T. E.

Skinner, representing the New Zealand Printing Union, that the agreement was still operating at the Nelson paper and now also at an Auckland paper but he said the agreement was not acceptable by employers as permanent because it could have effects throughout the industry which were not intended. Mr Skinner: But the agreement was made in good faith and is working in the industry.

Mr Worts said he agreed margins for skill should be

increased in the printing industry but not on the basis of award classifications, which needed revising. It would take a committee at least two and a half months to classify genuine skills in the industry. Evidence of a survey of printing firms in New Zealand showing a need for part-time workers, was given by the secretary of the Master Printers’ Federation, Mr D. I. Macdonald. The survey also showed that part-time workers were available in many centres.

Mr G. Cavanagh, manager of the “Evening Star,” Dunedin, said in evidence that advertising paste make-ups were in many cases done by girls who, in terms of the union’s claim on this subject, would be entitled to qualified tradesmen’s pay rates. He said he did not agree that a teletypesetter perforator operator justified the classification of tradesman.