M. A. TASKEB.]

55

1.—9.

18. Will you now tell us what you want?—At present we have no legal standing without registration, and are not able to go before the Conciliation Board or Arbitration Court to ask that the abuses under which domestic servants suffer should be remedied or alleviated. *19. Then, you want the definition of " worker " xvhich appeared in a previous measure to be inserted in the Bill of this year?— Yes. I believe that definition does cover domestic xvorkers. 20. " ' Worker ' means any person of any age of either sex employed by any employer." That would be the definition you xvant?—l belie\ r e that xvould cover it. What we are doing is not done in any aggressive spirit, but really with the desire to raise the status of the domestic w r orker, so that domestic employment will be more sought after, in preference to emplo3'ment in factories and workshops. 21. You think that as the Act stands it xvould include some of your people xvho are employed in lodginghouses and other places?—l believe it xvould. 22. But it would not include those engaged in domestic service? —The xvorkers I refer to are in domestic service to some extent, but the employers are employing them for their oxvn profit. 23. You want the xvhole of those engaged in domestic service to be bound by the Act?— Yes. Elijah Carey examined. (No. 17.) 1. The Chairman.] What are you?— Secretary of the Wellington Cooks and Waiters' Union. 2. Have you seen this Bill? —Yes. 3. Will you tell us xvhat you have to say with regard to it?—l am instructed on behalf of the union to give evidence on the question of the Arbitration Court overriding statute law—because the fact that the Arbitration Court has done so in our case is a very sore point with the members of our union. 4. Will you tell us in what way?— The position is this : Two years ago my union xvent to the Conciliation Board to obtain certain conditions, and took especial pains wdien framing the demands to make them conform to the hour provisions of the Shops and Offices Act. For instance, they asked that assistants in restaurants should work only fifty-two hours per week, as provided in the Shops and Offices Act. The Board, despite the protestations of myself and others assisting me in conducting the case, fixed the hours at sixty-five per xveek. We protested that it was not in the poxver of the Board, composed of five citizens, one of whom was a lawyer, to override the xvill of Parliament, Our protests xvere of no avail, and the recommendations of the Board became an agreement binding on the union and the employers. We communicated xvith the Labour Department, and asked that a case should be brought to show that it was not within the poxx'er of the Board to fix the hours at sixty-five against the fifty-two hours provided for by the Shops and Offices Act. After about nine or ten months' negotiations the case, which had previously been heard in the Magistrate's Court and a decision given in favour of the agreement as against the Act, was appealed against in the Supreme Court, with the result that the union's contention that the Act must hold as against the recommendations of the Board was upheld. We knew that by instigating this case xve were endangering the agreement, which, apart from the 65-hour provision for restaurant assistants, was a very good one in other respects ; and xve found that, because, as the lawyer gentleman put it, that xvas wrong in law, the xvhole agreement xvas considered by the President of the Arbitration Court to be invalid, and it xvas thrown out after being in existence for a year. We had at the time a dispute witli about ten employers who were not bound by the agreement and xvho refused to consent to be bound by the agreement, and xve took a case against the employers in the same industry —I believe the first case of the kind in the Dominion —to get an award binding those ten in the same way as xx-e thought the other 290 employers were bound. The President of the Arbitration Court ruled, previous to the hearing of our second dispute xvith the future employers, that our agreement was invalid, and agreed to attach all the parties bound by the old agreement to the new dispute. We had made our demands for the ten or twelve employers synonymous xvith the conditions laid down in the agreement, because xve thought that in the interests of everybody it xvas fair that these should be bound in the same way as the 290. Our conditions fixed the sixty-five hours a xveek as laid down by the Board in the first place against our protest. When the President of the Court ruled that the agreement was invalid because the Board had done something which in laxv it had no right to do, xve pointed out the trouble x\'e had taken and that the will of Parliament should hold as against the decision of four laymen and one lawyer, and xx T e asked that-in framing the axvard the Court should in justice to us so fix it that it xx-ould not override an Act of Parliament. We stated that as a union we believed that the opinion of eighty or ninety legislators should be given attention to, and that the provision in the labour laws which stated that the law should be subject to the axvard of the Arbitration Court did not in our opinion mean that the Arbitration Court should impose in its axvards hour provisions in excess of the hours fixed by statute laxv. The award of the Court subsequently made took axvay many of the conditions that the Board had given us. For instance, it took axvay preference of employment for female labour, it took away the Sunday holiday- xve had, and it even took away the half-holiday. In addition to depriving us of many good things we had under the agreement, xvhich the Court ruled xvas invalid because there xx r ere hours in it in excess of those provided for by the Shops and Offices Act, it reimposed those very hours; and the position was this : that, xvhile the Conciliation Board, composed, as I said, of four citizens and one legal gentleman, xvhich had previously recommended sixty-five hours a week for certain members of the union, had done something wrong which would not hold good in laxv, the Court, composed of one legal gentleman and two citizens, did the very same thing as the Board had done, and yet because the Court did it it was right. And the position is this, further : that if in Wellington there was no Cooks and Waiters' Union certain people would noxv be working only fifty-two hours a week, but because the union took advantage of the Act it had imposed on it an additional thirteen hours a week. I found subsequently, when I went to Christchurch to endeavour to organize a union there