PRINTING TRADE DISPUTE

Evening Star, Issue 22458, 1 October 1936, Page 18

PRINTING TRADE DISPUTE

RESUMPTION OF CONCILIATION PROCEEDINGS FORTY-HOUR WEEK AGAIN DISCUSSED [Pin United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, September 30. A further meeting of the Conciliation Council was held to-day to hear the New Zealand printing and related trades’ industrial dispute. The appellants were the Printing Trade Federation of Workers and the respondents the .Master Printers’ Federation and Newspaper Proprietors’ Association. The previous meeting had been adjourned pending the decision of the Arbitration Court ou the hours question, the court eventually deciding that the hours should be the same as in tho present award. Mr C. H. Chapman, for the employees, said tho decision of the court was entirely unexpected so far as tho employees were concerned, and lie thought more progress would be made _at tho present sitting if the parties discussed the 40-hour week. Air Clarkson, for tho employers, said there was no doubt that both parties went to the court upon a clear understanding that its decision would be accepted. The court’s judgment had been determined by evidence regarding the practical difficulties of reducing hours, especially in the production of newspapers, and by evidence showing that the industry generally would not bear the heavy extra cost which such a reduction would involve. After considerable discussion tho council adjourned until the afternoon in order that a suggestion by Mr Chapman that the 40-hour week should operate from a certain date in the future could be considered. After further consideration this afternoon of the proposals formulated by the workers during the adjournment, the council adjourned until to-morrow morning to enable the workers to consider counter-proposals put forward by the employers. FURTHER EXEMPTION APPLICANTS When a large number of additional applications for exemption from tho provisions of the Factories Amendment Act, 1936, limiting the hours of work to 40 per week, came before the Arbitration Court to-day from the employers and factory occupiers engaged in printing and related trades, it was submitted on behalf of the workers that there was no provision in the Factories Act which gave the court authority to deal with applications for exemption filed after September _l, 1936. Tho court reserved its decision. On behalf of tho applicants, Mr E. Clarkson, secretary of the New Zealand Master Printers’ Association, said the application was designed to remove any possibility of doubt with regard to the application of the court’s order of September 1, and to ensure by a formal order that effect was given to the court’s intentions, as master printers understood it to be, that in fact the benefits of that order should apply uniformly and without exception to every occupier of a factory throughout the industry in its several branches.