RAILWAYMEN

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 20 June 1924, Page 7

RAILWAYMEN

BOARD OF INQUIRY. GIVE AND TAKE. (BY TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION.) WELLINGTON, June 20. A number of claims bearing upon the hours, of employment of the various workers in the railway service were discussed before the Railway Inquiry Board this morning, and it seems likely that the inquiry will run into the second week.- A mutual agreement was reached between the Department and the society that when a. guard is booked off duty between shifts’for less than eight hours at his home station he shall receive two hours 1 standing time. The society presented a claim that booking men off at their home station should be abolished^ Mr Connelly, for the society, said instances bad occurred in which a guard had been put off a shift between return suburban runs and sometimes work was found about the station in the meantime, but otherwise the men were put off and lost tlieir pay. Mr Sterling, for the Department, said it was a question of broken shifts, which, were insenarabie from any transport industry. The Department made a bona fide effort to find work wherever possible and to confine broken shifts to reasonable limits, about two hours, including meal time. In some cases work could be found for one man, but not for two. It was all a. matter of give-and-take, and the giving was in favour of the Department. Mr Connelly appealed to the Board to give protection by prohibiting the Department from playing ducks and drakes with the men’s time. Another shift : question arose in the next clause, which asked that all tho traffic men be allowed ten clear hours off duty before being again booked on. Hie idea was to give the men a. longer rest between the shifts. The break at present was eight hours. Mr Sterling said that the instructions already provides that, whenever possible members of the second division were to be booked off f or ten hours. It was another case in which the society was seeking a rigid rule where elasticity must exist. A definition was sought bv the society m regard to standing time at roieign stations, Mr Connelly contendl n S“at the agreement entered into in 1918, providing for payment at a flat rate for standing time, had been violated by the Department as a. result of the interpretation put upon the aoreement by the Department, whereby “men ueie paid for three hours, irrespective of the amount of standing time They were being robbed of pay to which the'v were rightly entitled.

Mr Sterling denied the alleged violation.' AVhen the Bill to give effect to the agreement was before Parliament in |919, the society appeared before the Railways Committee of the House and repudiated the arrangement, which therefore went by the board. The whole question was whether the Department should or should not book a man off at foreign stations. That depended upon whether there was work available.