A SHOPPING PROBLEM

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 48, 20 November 1926, Page 7

A SHOPPING PROBLEM

CLOSING HOUR OF STORES JUDGE SUGGESTS ZONE SYSTEM Dominion Special. Auckland, November 19. "I wash to goodness an amendment would be made to the Shops and Offices Act taking away the responsibility of these exemptions from the Arbitration Court. How we are to understand the circumstances of every storekeeper in the country I don’t know,’ said Mr. Justice Frazer in the Arbitration Court this morning when applications for exemptions from award hours were under review. It was to be hoped that employers and unions would come to an understanding and get the section repealed, continued His Honour. If thev did they would have his blessing. The responsibility might be shifted to Magistrates or someone else. As it was, the Court was asked to deal with applications from Waipukurau and Maungatapuri, and all sorts of places that nobody ever heard of. lhe Court under present conditions could not deal with the thing properly. It could -.only tinker with it. In many cases the Court was faced with the difficulty that if small suburban shopkeepers were forced to observe the award closing hours they would be deprived of a lot of business because the bulk of their customers worked in the citv. If these suburban shops closed at the same hour as the citv shops it would mean that people returning from work would be unable to make their purchases in the suburbs and would be compelled to do their shopping in the citv.

Mr. \V. E. Sill, of the Butchers’ Union, who was opposing an application for exemption made by a cooked meat shop <proprietor observed that the shopkeeper in the suburbs need not stay there. He could go to work lor the big man and get the award wage. “That may sound all very well, but I am surprised to hear that you should sav that a man should be compelled to remain a, what do yon call it, ‘a wage slave,’ all his life, and be prevented from launching out on his own,’’ retorted His Honour. The fact was that the majority of people ’who worked in the cite could not get back to their homes till nearly (i p.m., and to make the shopkeeper close at 5.30 was tn make these people shop in (he citv. His Honour went on to say that the policv of th- Court was to’enable the suburban shopkeeper to retain his own proper business without encrooch- «• ine on the business of others “What is required is a svstem of zones, with the- same closing hour for all shops in each zone,” sia-l His Honour “There could he a central citv zone with the hour fixed at 5.30, a suburban zone with shops closing at, say, 6 o’clock, and an outer nr country zone in which shops coull close at any old hour they chose.”