BAKERY AWARD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 July 1938, Page 6

BAKERY AWARD

EMPLOYER AS FOREMAN QUESTIONS FOR ARBITRATION (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. Whether or not it is necessary to employ a foreman in a bakehouse was the issue placed before the Second Court of Arbitration this morning. An appeal was brought against the decision of a magistrate who dismissed a case brought by the Labour Department against L. A. Woodward, Ltd, for an alleged breach of the Northern Wellington and Canterbury Bakers’ and Pastrycooks’ and their labourers’ award. Mr R. T. Bailey submitted that an employer was entitled to be regarded as a foreman only if he was a competent baker, and if he did the work of a foreman. There was no doubt that Mr Woodward was competent, but if his staff began work at 10 p.m. and worked until 7 a.m., and he was there only occasionally between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., Mr Bailey contended, he could not be classed as a foreman. Mr Justice Hunter remarked that the magistrate had held •in his judgment that there was nothing in the award regarding the foreman to be employed. Mr Bailey submitted that a foreman should be employed or that Mr Woodward should do a foreman’s work. Someone must accept responsibility and undertake direction. It was accepted in the trade that a foreman should be employed. If there was only one man in a bakery, he was paid a foreman’s wages. Dr A. C. Haslam, for Mr Woodward, said the defence had been that Mr Wcodword did substantially the work of a foreman, and there was no provision in the award requiring a foreman to be employed. Even before the period of the alleged breaches the bakery was an automatic one. Mr Bailey, from the way the charges were framed, apparently considered that the employment of a foreman was obligatory, but Mr Woodward did all the supervising required in an automatic bakery. The Court reserved ita decision.