NEW AWARD SOUGHT

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 152, 23 March 1939, Page 3

NEW AWARD SOUGHT

Builders And General Labourers DECISION RESERVED Decision was reserved by the Court of Arbitration yesterday in the application for a Dominion award' to cover builders and general labourers. The bearing occupied the greater part of three days, 12 witnesses being called for the workers and seven for the employers. In his summary Mr. P. M. Butler, advocate for the workers, repeated the objection of his union to labourers being placed on the lowest wages level. The Court ha'd never said that its unskilled rate was peculiarly applicable to builders and general labourers, and he asked for a separate entity.

He submitted that the industry was progressive and that classification was necessary. There had been no alteration in the classification by the Court for more than 20 years. Existing judgments stressing the need for greater recognition of improved processes in the Industry were quoted by Mr. Butler, who said that the union’s classification had been put forward to enable a proper basis of recognition to be reached. The union had submitted that It was almost impossible to live on £5 a week, and that the Court should give at least that amount either on an hourly or a weekly basis, said Mr. Butler. The “money wage” of 2/4 an hour for 40 hours was £4/13/4, but the present average as a result of lost time and other factors was £3/8/6} a week. Labourers were not unskilled workers, contended Mr. Butler, who maintained that the Court would be justified in treating them as a separate entity with the standard rate as a guide. Since 1914-15 the margin between the rates received by carpenters and bricklayers as compared with labourers.had increased. Mr. Butler contended that the marginal differences between labourers and tradesmen required adjusting.

Argument submitted by Mr. Mountjoy, advocate for the employers, that the Dominion's position was not as sound or as stable today as when the Court made its standard wage pronouncement in 1937 was criticized by Mr. Butler.

Mr. Butler concluded by saying that a survey of the whole of the returns from the whole economic level of the country would prove that the country was in a much lietter position, that the prosperity was greater and the outlook much brighter than in 1937 when the Court made its pronouncement. In his final address to the Court Mr. Mountjoy remarked that neither the Court nor the employers had tied lal)ourers up with the unskilled rate. The Court had fixed the rate for labourers, which ranged from 2/4 an hour to 2/7, which clearly indicated that the semiskill necessary for some workers bad been recognized.