AN IMPORTANT AWARD.

Wairarapa Age, 25 February 1927, Page 5

AN IMPORTANT AWARD.

FORTY-FOUR-HOUR WEEK IN AUSTRALIA. FEDERAL AND STATE COURTS. MELBOURNE, February 24. The majority judgment of the Federal Arbitration Court awarding a 44-hour week in the engineering industry is highly important, as to some extent it determines the standard hours of labour in Australian industries. Chief Justice Dethridge, in delivering judgment, said that the State laws had purported to make a shorter week general amongst most workers in New South Wales and Queensland and State arbitratal awards had a similar effect in Western Australia. It existed very largely in New Zealand, and had received support by men not themselves members of the wage-earning classes. The conclusion could not be evaded that a continuance of a 48-hour week was likely to be accompanied by an increased slackening and reduction of output among certain classes of workers which would largely offset the output derived from the extra four hours Of work per week. The Court was not influenced by political considerations, but could not ignore economic conditions merely because they were created partly or wholly by political or Governmental action, even though that action might be considered by sonic people to have been ill-advised or too far-reaching.

In any case, the Court could not prevent any person or body, or any State Government or Legislature, from coptinning to grant a 44-hour week to its own employees. Therefore, the Court ordered that a 44-hour week be granted in the engineering industry. The Judge added: “It must be taken as a guiding line that the judgment indicates the probable course of the Court in future applications.”— (P.AJ