GENERAL LABOURERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 136, 6 December 1938, Page 13

GENERAL LABOURERS

NEW AWARD SOUGHT

CONCILIATION COUNCIL

Increased rates of pay based on a weekly basic rate of £5 in place of the present rate of 2s 4d an hour and certain alterations in the conditions of employment for general labourers are asked for in an application ma da by general labourers' unions in the various industrial districts for a new Dominion award. Points in dispute between the applicant unions and the employers were argued before the Conciliation Commissioner (Mr. S. Ritchie) at Wellington today.

Mr. W. J. Mountjoy appeared as advocate for the employers, and Mr. P. M. Butler for the applicant unions.

The employees 1 wage proposals and certain other proposals disputed by the employers have yet to be dealt with, but agreement was reached this morning on other conditions that will be embodied in the new award.

It was agreed that the week's work shall not exceed 40 hdurs —eight hours per day to be worked between 7.30 aon. and 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday, both days inclusive.

Workers working in wet places or foul air in tunnel work are to work six hours a day and be paid as if they had worked eight hours.

The wages asked for by the employees .are as follows:—

Unskilled Workers.—Not less than £5 per week.. "Unskilled" workers are to be deemed to be workers employed as watchmen, men engaged solely as shovellers at sand pits, shingle pits, and sand dumps, lamplighters, sweepers, men cleaning bricks after demolition, advertising labourers (sandwich men, display, novelty, caricature, and impersonation men), bill posters, and men distributing advertising matter.

Semi-skilled Workers.—Not less than £5 10s per week. "Semi-skilled" workers are to be deemed to be auctioneers' labourers, mosaic labourers, yard labourers, sack, bottle, metal, and marine store labourers, tar and asphalt work labourers, barrow men, navvies, pick and shovel men, rock breakers (hand), trench diggers (pick and shovel), fillers, printers' labourers, and, with certain exceptions, all, quarryworkers and building trades workers.

Skilled Workers.—Not less than £6 per week. "Skilled" workers are to be deemed to be riggers, paviours, asphalters, scaffolders, excavators, machine mixers, puddlers, vibrators, steel construction workers, screeders, staging workers, block and fall men, jib men, crane men, winch men, tar and bitumen workers, dog men, men using mechanical rammers, hammers, drills, borers, and breakers, flag layers, kerb layers, pile-drivers, derrick erectors, cement gun operators, concrete machinists, well borers, tunnel men, shot firers, crusher feeders, tool sharpeners, bearing down men, timber men, compressor attendants, plasterers' labourers, steel fabricators, steel turners, and sieel benders.

Casual Workers. —Specified rates for the particular work computed on an hourly basis, plus 20 per cent, as casual rate.

Claim is also made for additional special risk payments of from 2d to 3d an hour above the ordinary rates, and a similar claim for additional pay is made for men engaged in specified dirty or dusty work. The employers' counter-claims ask for deletion of the clause referring to semi-skilled workers.

Under the existing award there is no provision for the general classification of workers as unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled, but rates of pay ranging from 2s 4d an hour to 2s 7d an hour plus certain extra allowances ranging from Id to-3d.an, hour are provided for.