STONEMASONS’ DEMANDS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 50, 27 January 1938, Page 9

STONEMASONS’ DEMANDS.

HOURS AND WAGES. Per Press Association. CPIRISTCHURCH, Jan. 26. A working week of 35 hours, with 23 days’ holiday each year on full pay, rates of pay ranging from a mininura of 3s to 3s 6d an hour, and provision for payment of first-class railway fares when engaged on country work. These demands are included in the clauses in the application made by the New Zealand Stonemasons’ Industrial Union of Workers in a dispute with the employers to be heard in Conciliation Council in Wellington on February 15. It is intended that the award should operate throughout the whole of New Zealand and the union claims that its term should be for 12 months. The New Zealand Builders and Contractors’ Association of Employers, several borough councils, stonemasons, and monumental masons have been listed as parties to the proposed award. Stonemasons are defined as “men qualified and engaged to build, fix or cut. shape and finish by band or machine any class of work either in sandstone, trachyte, granite, bluestone, marble, or limestone, and to fix and cut terracotta or any other stone subsitute.” Work done in cemeteries in fixing memorials or erecting stone tablets is also classified as stonemasons work. The hours of work claimed are seven hours daily for five days a week, with a rate of,3s 6d an hour for stonemasons to a minimum of 3s an hour for labourers, and an extra 3s a day is asked for foremen in charge of four or more workers on outside jobs. Extra rates are also claimed for men engaged in working sandstone and granite. The claims Include a period of 10 successive days’ holiday on full pay as well as the statutory holidays. The union also asks that the three days following Boxing Day should be observed as holidays, work done on these days to he paid for at double rates. Should Christmas Day. Boxing Day. or any of the three following days fall on a Sunday it is asked that the Christmas and New Year holidays he adjusted so that seven successive working days shall be observed as holidays.