.1. BEVERIDGE.j

5

I.—9a.

to 15s. or 13s. 6d.—that will have the effect of driving a percentage of the people who patronize these hotels to the second-class hotels : they will go there sooner than pay the extra money. Then, if the rise takes place in the second-class hotels, people will be forced to go to the boardinghouses. 7. Mr. Clark.] That would mean they would require more labour, would it not ? These people would not go and work at the boardinghouses for nothing ?—No. If we put up our tariff we are not going to make ourselves any better. 8. But it would affect the boardinghouses just the same ? —But they are not required to give the employees a holiday. 9. They would have to get extra hands to do the extra work ?—But do you not see that they could compete with, us most unfairly by not having to give a holiday. 10. The workers get the holiday now on Sunday in the boardinghouses ? —They only get so-much time off ; they have to turn-to in the morning. It is all very well to say that the work of the chef, who goes off during the day for his half-holiday at present, can be done by the second cook. Before he goes off the chef has only one meal to prepare. Before he goes off in the afternoon he sees that things are on the way. But to ask that the chef be away for one whole day is a different matter. 11. Is there anything different in this Bill from the Bill on which evidence was given so exhaustively before ? —I do not think we had evidence on a six-days Bill before. 12. Mr. Veitch.] You say there is ambiguity in the Bill: will you explain to the Committee in what respects the Bill is ambiguous ?—ln the second clause, to which Mr. Carey pointed. We have had legal advice, and our advisers say there is a certain amount of ambiguity there—in the word that Mr. Carey mentioned, " exclusively." 13. What evidence do you want to call in connection with that ambiguity? What further evidence can you produce in connection with that matter ? —1 am not alluding to that. That was only one of the reasons why the matter should be postponed, so as to permit us to get a better definition and see where we are. My main reason for asking for postponement is that evidence may be brought to show how seriously this Hill is going to harass hotel employers throughout this Dominion. 1.4. lam asking about the ambiguous clause ?—That is for our legal adviser to say. His advice is that there is a certain amount of ambiguity. 15. You could get evidence in Wellington to-day with regard to the ambiguity of that clause, could you not ?—Yes. 16. And that is all that is necessary so far as that is concerned.—Yes. 17. With regard to the extra cost, you say it will cost from £12 to £15 a week extra in your case ? —Yes. 1.8. Is it not a fact that in this Bill there is not really a reduction of hours at all ?—lt is a fact that there is a reduction of hours. At the present time the Shops and Offices Amendment Act says that males shall work sixty-two hours and females fifty-eight hours a week. If this Bill is passed —and you only give us six days a week, and you restrict us to ten hours a day under the Shops and Offices Act —how on earth are we going to work our employees sixty-two hours ? We can only work them sixty hours. That is a reduction of two hours. Take the last six years :we have reduced the hours of work for employees in hotels from, I think, seventy-two or seventy-five down to sixty-two. Is not that a drastic reduction enough ? 19. I cannot see where a reduction of two hours a week for the male employees and no reduction in the case of the female employees in the actual number of hours you are allowed to work them is going to increase, in a staff of, say, fifty ?—You are missing the point. We are not dealing with hours at all. lam dealing with the whole holiday, when a man does not turn-to at all. If it were a question of hours and getting off we could adjust it, but when it is a question of a day off I cannot see how I can adjust it unless I put the rest of the work on to the remaining employees, and then it will not be properly done. The alternative is to augment the staff by the number of employees that are off. If there are eight off every day I must augment the staff by that number. 20. Even though you can work the others longer hours ?—I could not do that. If I have five housemaids —one for each floor —and each has twenty rooms, do you mean to tell me that if the housemaid on the first floor goes off the four remaining girls can do the work of No. 5 just as effectively as it would be done if the whole five were there ? I say we cannot do it. It cannot be done except by augmenting the staff or putting the extra work on to those who are remaining. Eight people go off on Monday, and I require fifty to work the place. This Bill asks me to work that house with a staff of forty-two. I say it cannot be done with, forty-two. The Bill, then, asks me to augment my staff by employing eight extra hands. 21. If you knock off eight you have forty-two left. Surely you will admit that forty-two people working ten hours would do more work than forty-two people working, we will say, eight hours ?— You are getting away from the point. 22. Is it not a fact that forty-two people working ten hours a day will do more work per day than forty-two people working eight hours a day ? —lf they like to do it, possibly. 23. Would not the boss have a say in the matter, too ? —The boss cannot go and stand over all the staff when they are distributed over the house. If it was only one day in the week I should say it could be done at a stretch, but when the thing is spread over the whole six days in the week it is not reasonable to ask the staff to carry on. It would not be a reasonable thing for me to ask fortytwo of mv staff to carry on the work, for six days consecutively, to allow other members to get off for a holiday. 24. Is it not a matter of asking them to do amongst them just half a day's work ?-—They would not do it : they would leave. It is a hard enough job to get them to assist one another now. 25. Is there much difference between the total amount of work done on a Sunday and the total amount of work done on the other six days of the week —that is, so far as the people affected by this