ANNUAL HOLIDAY

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 189, 7 May 1940, Page 9

ANNUAL HOLIDAY

Otago Hospital Board Workers

RULING SOUGHT

Dominion Special Service.

DUNEDIN, May 6.

The annual holiday to be given by the Otago Hospital Board to workers covered'by the New Zealand Hospital Boards’ Engine Drivers, Firemen and Greasers’ Award was the subject o± an application for an interpretation heard, by the industrial magistrate, Mr. J. A. Gilmour, in the Court of Arbitration today. The question submitted by the, inspector of awards, Mr. W. H. Cadwallader, arose from the clause of the award which provides that “fill workers shall be allowed 21 consecutive days’ holiday per annum on full pay at ordinary rates of pay on completion of 12 months’ service,” and the point was whether this meant that the worker was to be allowed 21 working days’ holiday on full pay or three calendar weeks off duty, with three ordinary weeks’ pay. Mr. Cadwallader said that there was no breach of the award involved. The dispute concerned the meaning of ‘ 21 consecutive days’ holiday.” The board held it to mean three calendar weeks, which constituted only 15 working days, whereas the union considered that proper compliance with the clause meant 21 actual working days. For the union, Mr. J. Robinson said that the three weeks’ holiday proposed by the board would include six days on which the men would not be working in any case, since they were allowed to work only five days in seven They worked to a roster and some were beginning or finishing on every day of the seven. Mr. Robinson argued that it was not the intention of the Court to include in the annual holiday days on which workers would be free, independent of annual leave. The nature of their, work had been taken into account.

Mr. A. N. Haggitt, who represented the board, submitted that it was perfectly clear that the meaning of the clause was that the holiday was to be taken on 21 days which followed each other, including Saturdays and Sundays. “If the workers’ contention is correct,” he said, “we could have the absurd result that each worker regularly employed for five shifts a week would be entitled to four weeks and one shift holiday, which surely was never contemplated. Such a holiday would exceed in fact the annual holiday normally taken 'by any professional or business man of his own volition.” He argued that on principle and on authority, as well as upon tests of common sense and ordinary industrial practice, the words meant simply three calendar weeks’ holiday.

The magistrate reserved his decision.