HEMP INDUSTRY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 484, 23 September 1909, Page 3

HEMP INDUSTRY.

CONTRACTS AS PIECE WORK. Mr R. H. Dalhousie, a member of the Executive of the Manawatu Flaxtnills’ Union of Employees, discussing with a Times reporter the effect of Mr Justice Sim’s recent decision in allowing a contract to be regarded as piecework, said this decision practically nullified the award of the Court in the flaxmill trade. Prior to this judgment the men under the award were earning a fair wage, which, in some cases was considerably more than a living vyage. “The importance of the decision is, remarked Mr Dalhousie, “that there is no existing award that can’t be broken under that decision. As has already been pointed out, it would be a simple matter for a master baker who knows the average quantity of bread he turned out saying to bis men, T am turning out so many loaves a week, I will let you a contract for it. You can employ labour for it or do the work yourselves.’ These men would be outside any Award of the Court. The reason for the clause being allowed in the award at all was on account of some millers having let the working of their mills by contract when it was inconvenient for them to run the mills themselves. What we are asking the Trades Council to do is to get an interpretation of the Supreme Court, or Appeal Court, bn a point of law—whether Mr Justice Sim has not made a mistake in defining the Oroua Bridge contract —the particular question at issue—as contract and not as piecework.”