WAGE INCREASE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 43, 14 November 1940, Page 7

WAGE INCREASE

Two Applications For Exemption Refused

The Court of Arbitration, in reserved judgments delivered by Mr. Justice Tyndall, refused two applications for the exclusion of certain workers from the operation of the general order of the Court made in August granting an increase of 5 per cent, in wages to meet the increased cost of living. The first application was in respect of workers in receipt of more than £6 a week employed under the New Zealand Dairy-Factory Employees' Award and the various direct dairy-factory managers’ awards. The grounds of the application were (1) that the workers concerned were already receiving sufficient to enable them to afford any increase iu the cost of living which had so far occurred. (2) That payment of the increase awarded by the general order could only be passed on at the expense of the primary producer, by whom it could not be passed on. (3) . That the increase accordingly constituted an unfair and uneconomic burden on the primary industries. The judgment, dealing first with the second and third grounds, states that the Court before making the general order heard considerable evidence on the position of the primary industries, and no further information had since been supplied to the Court which iu the Court’s opinion justified a variation in the general order so far as it concerned dairy industry employees. The Court also came Io the conclusion that an order for exclusion was not justified on the first ground.

The second ease was an' application for exclusion from the general order of clerical workers in retail shops employed for 44 hours a week under the New Zealand (except Canterbury l Clerical Workers’ Award and the Canterbury ClerieaJ Workers' Award. In the recent clerical workers awards provision was made for clerical workers who are required to work -14 hours a week to receive in addition to the weekly wage payment at ordinary rates for any time worked in excess of 40 hours a week.

The grounds stated in support of the application were that the payment of the full amount of the increase awarded by the general order discriminated unfairly between different classes of workers employed in the same establishments and was calculated to cause friction and dissatisfaction between such classes of workers.

“The Court." stated the judgment, “cannot accept the contention that the payment of the full amount of the increase awarded by the general order discriminates unfairly between the different classes of workers (clerical workers, storemen, and watchmen) employed in the same establishments (retail shops), as the change in the relative position of these workers has not been brought about by the operation of the general order, but by tile recent alteration in the clerical workers' awards. The grounds given in tin* ap-

plication cannot therefore be recognized by the Court as adequate, and the application is accordingly refused.”