Tighter Laws for Shopkeepers

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 101, 20 July 1927, Page 13

Tighter Laws for Shopkeepers

AN AMENDING BILL HOURS OF ASSISTANTS (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter.) \ WELLINGTON, Tuesday. fJMIE Shops and Offices Amendment Bill introduced in the House of Representatives to-day provides that no boy assistant under 18 or female assistants must work in a shop after 10.30 p.m. except on Christmas and New Year’s Eve. No shop assistant is to start before 7 a.m. or, in the case of a butcher or baker, 4 a.m. Milkmen are excluded. No boy or girl under 16 is to start before 7 a.m. Where there are more than six women employed in a shop a cloakroom is to be provided, unless the inspector thinks this unnecessary. Shops being carried on as a post j office may open at any time for the transaction purely of telephonic business. By requisition the closing hours of chemists’ shops on Sundays in certain districts may be determined. Restrictions are imposed and penalties provided for the occupier of a shop in one district who delivers goods after hours in any other district. Magistrates are given power to grant exemptions from the closing hours provisions, although cancellation may be applied for at any time by occupiers affected by the order. The Minister is given power to alter the statutory closing day of shops in any particular week. Shops in which two or more Asiatics are engaged, whether as employees or not, are to be registered. Provisions for the restriction of the sale of tobacco, cigars and cigarettes are made in the Bill. The inspector is to notify publicly when such goods are not to be sold, while those other than tobacconists, who sell these commodities, are compelled to notify this fact, together with the hours at which the sale is permitted. Private hotels and boardinghouses are excluded from this clause. RETAILERS’ PETITION That the closing hours of all shops should be definitely fixed by Act of Parliament, and not governed by arbitration awards, is the contention of 1,170 New Zealand retailers, on whose behalf Mr. A. Harris, Waitemata, has introduced a petition into the House of Representatives. The petition asks*that a conference of all retailers’ associations should be convened in Wellington by the Minister of Labour for the purpose of determining the closing hours of shops, and by legislative amendment removing several existing anomalies. It asks that any retailer carrying on a busi ness, dealing exclusively in one class of goods—for example, that of a fruiterer, confectioner, or milk vendor — shall have the same privileges granted to them as under the existing laws, and that any small shopkeeper prejudicially affected by the legislation shall have power to apply to a magistrate for exemption, or alternatively be granted such other relief as Parliament thinks fit.