DAIRY FACTORIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 21, 26 January 1938, Page 13

DAIRY FACTORIES

SEVEN-DAY WEEK

IMPORTANT TEST CASE

Sixty dairy factories will be affected, involving £250,000 in wages annually, by a test case brought in the New Plymouth Court before Mr. W. H. Woodward. S.M., who reserved his decision. The case was brought by Mr. F. Wilson, Labour Department inspector, under the ' Factory Amendment Act, 1936.

The charge was against Percy Smith, manager of the Waitoitoi Co-operative Dairy Company, Limited, of allowing an employee, C. Sadler, to be employed for seven days in each week between August 11 and September 22, 1937. Mr. J. F. B. Stevenson, of Wellington, appeared for the company. The points at issue (states a correspondent of the "New Zealand Herald") were whether a manager came within the interpretation of "worker" and the exact meaning of the words "regularly employed." The- section of the Act reads: "No worker shall be employed for more than six days in any one week, provided no more than two workers are regularly employed." DEPARTMENT'S CONTENTIONS. It had been the practice.in Taranaki, said Mr, Wilson, for factories with a manager and two men to work seven days a week, with a six-day week where three men and a manager were employed. The staff at the Waitoitoi factory comprised a manager and one other man, but later an ext: _i hand was engaged. If Smith, the manager, were deemed to be a worker, then there were three workers between August and September, when seven days a week were worked. The Waitoitoi factory later engaged another man and commenced a six-day week. The inspector contended that Smith was still a worker in so far as the offence was concerned, and he would have an effect upon the men's wages. The question of "regularly employed" was a matter of whether the Department had to take it over a year, over a season, or week by week, to. establish whether a factory had more than two men employed. Assuming there was a manager and one man employed and that an extra hand was taken on for the flush, then only two, men were regularly employed. EXCLUDED FROM AWARD. Mr. Stevenson outlined the Act at length and drew comparisons on the meaning of the words "manager" and "regularly employed." He contended that a manager was riot a worker, and said that the recent dairy factory workers' award had not included managers. The dairying industry was in close touch with the Labour Department when the' award was made and managers were excluded from the workers' award.

Mr. Stevenson stated that if managers were classed as workers it would affect about 60 factories in the Dominion and involve the payment of about £250,000 extra in wages.