LADY CAKE BAKERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 October 1920, Page 5

LADY CAKE BAKERS.

AN ABSURD PROSECUTION. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, October 2. Mr. Justice Stringer, in the Arbitration Court, made severe- comment on the Labor Department during the hearing of a case connected with the prosecution of two women at Gisborne. In running a home-made cake shop, they were alleged to have infringed the Gisborne bakers' award, which prohibits women working in a bakehouse. His Honor said he failed to understand the principles upon which the Department proceeded. Time after time there Tv'eva breaches of awards in the way of strikes and no prosecutions ensued. Here was a case in a remote part of the country where a couple of ladies were baking a few cakes, and the question of the meaning of a bakehouse cropped up, with the result that the ladies were prosecuted. His Honor had to confess that he did not understand it. The case whicli gave rise to the remarks from the Bench was one in which the Gisborne magistrate asked the Court to say whether it had jurisdiction to insert a clause in an award prohibiting women from working in a bakehouse. The court held unhesitatingly that it had no jurisdiction to say whether women should or should not work in bakehouses. Counsel for defendant admitted, in answer to a query from the court, that the question was now a purely academic one, as in Auckland women who owned homemade cake shops had not been cited as parties to the bakers' dispute, and since the prosecution in Gisborne. which dated from February last, a new award had been filed and the prohibition against women working in bakehouses had been deleted.