WAIHI MINERS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4531, 23 February 1923, Page 3

WAIHI MINERS.

THE NEW /lAWABD. A DAILY WAGE. The minimum wages stipulated, in the amended Waihi Gold Miners’ Award range from 15s lOd for shaftmfen with machine or hand steel, o 13s 10d for bracemen, surface labourers, etc. The Judge of the Arbitration Court, Mr F. V. Frazer, says in a memorandum that the Court, in framing the amended awjard, did not depart from the wording of the clause providing for “ payment of wages' per day or per shift of eight hours,” as the former award did not provide for broken portions of a day. Dally Wage Hitherto inidlvis|lblei. “The Cpurt,”>he says, "under Mr Justice Sim, laid down the rule that, in the absence of express provision to the contrary, a weekly or .a daily ■wage was indivisible,. and the rule has never been departed from. We were not informed at the hearing that the parties had treated the daily wage fixed by the agreement as divisible, and that the practice was to pay five and a half day's'’ wages for a week of five and a half days. Toe Court assumed that the former agreement bore its correct legal»interpretation, and that six days’ wages were paid ; and that the reference to. eight hours .indicated the number of hours to be worked, except in hot, wet, or gassy places, before-overtime rates became payable. It was the intention of the Court to grant a measure ’of relief to the companies, by reducing the rates of wages by 6d per dayConsidering the Workers. As, however, the cost-of-living adjustments had already been made, the majority of the Court was of thempin,ioh that some compensation should no given to the workers, and it was accordingly provided that the new rates of -wages should not be subject to r evision until November, 1923, which would place the workers in a relatively better position after May 1. 1923, if a further general order reducing wages of other workers', in accordance with .a fall in the cost of living, were then made. ■ - ' An Error Rectified-. The Court finds now that instead of the Waihi miners’ rates being higher than the Court’s basic rates for other workers, as was stated' in the memorandum to the award, they are actual- ' ly lower, owing to the week's wages being based on five and .a half day-s pay instead of six. The minimum wage for a week’s work for a surface labourer at Waihi is £3 15s 2d, a-, against the Court’s standard minimum rate of £3 16s Id. It has 1 n'ot been the Court’s practice to reduce rates for labourers below the minimum of £3 16s Id, and the Court would not have reduced wages by 6d per day, or 3s per week, if the'effect, of the reduction would have been to bring the minimum rate below £3 16s Id per week. The majority of the Jourt is of the opinion that the stabilisation clause should be deleted, and that the new schedule of rates should increased by 2d per day all rouhd, thus bringing the minimum rate up to the Court’s present Standard minimum. As the rates of wages were fixed under a misapprehension as to the practice agreed upon by the parties, the Court/ has made this order of its own motion.