DOUBLE WAGES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 849, 18 December 1929, Page 13

DOUBLE WAGES

ANOMALY IN FREEZING WORKERS’ AWARD COURT INTERPRETS CLAUSE Under an interpretation of the freezing workers’ award given by the Arbitration Court today, not only is the principal employer of a slaughterhouse assistant liable to pay the minimum wage of 8s a day a week, but a.so a contractor, who engages the worker concurrently in his usual occupation. The decision means that the worker is entitled to double the average minimum wage for any week in which he is engaged by two employers concurrently. The judgment was given on a claim brought in tlje Magistrate’s Court by the Auckland Freezing Workers’ Union against W. and R. Fletcher (N.Z.), Ltd., for a £2O penalty foi’ a breach of the award. The case was stated by the magistrate, Mr. E. C. Cutten, to the Arbitration Court for interpretation. According to the facts, a slaughterman, Alfred Hill, was employed by the defendant company as a slaughterhouse assistant, and he was paid his full wages up to April 17, 1929. On the following day a contractor engaged Hill up to April 24, principally as a slaughterhouse assistant, and paid him the full award rate. DLiring this time, however, the company also employed Hill but only paid him on the hourly rate for his work. ON THE PAY-SHEET In delivering the Court’s decision today, Mr. Justice Frazer said that the work performed by Hill obviously came under clause 3i K, which required employers to pay the men not less than the minimum wage of 8s a day weekly, during the time they were on the employers’ pay-sheet. The Court held that as Hill was on the company’s paysheet he was entitled to the minimum daily rate of 8s a day weekly. There was no doubt that concurrent employments were not contemplated when the clause was drafted. In this case, the contractors, not being parties to the award, were not bound by it; the company was the only employer bound. It was impossible to read into the clause a proviso that only the principal employer of a worker was responsible for the payment of the minimum wage. A change in the system of working had been made, and the argument that the question was settled by custom could not now be relied upon. The only conclusion open to the Court was that the company was responsible for the payment of the minimum average wages. While not dissenting, Mr. Schmitt, employers’ assessor, makes the following comment: “ABSURD PCV.TION” “It was never contemplated that two or more employers might each be liable to pay the minimum of £ 2 8s a week, and thereby create an absurd position. If custom was adopted as a basis for deciding this matter, and I think it should be, the workers whose claims are being adjudicated on in this and other cases now pending, would be entitled to have their wages made up to the extent of approximately £lO in the aggregate, instead of about £6OO the total of the sums now claimed, to which- amount they have apparently a legal, but really no moral right. Apparently the only way in which to set the matter right for the future is to recast the sub-clause in question, so as to ensure that it will express beyond doubt the original intention of the employers and workers when they framed it.”