K. .1. CAKFA . '

I.—9a

working in the trade. I want now to say out word in evidence about petitions of workers who have purported to sign that they did not want the holiday. We have heard of only one hotel staff in Wellington, the Bristol, signing to the effect that they did not want the holiday. Our information was that the mistress in that hotel went round and gut the girls to sign up on a threat that if the clause passed they would be worked longer hours in each week. However, we have now the signature of all the girls in the Bristol that they are anxious for the full day's holiday. There is just this other point : the Hotel Bristol staff, two years ago, were so keen on the six-day week that they worked strenuously for the return of Mr. Fisher for his advocacy of the principle: the hotel was one of his strongholds. I wish to put this to the Committee: that, even if the signatures were genuinely in favour of no holiday, they should not weigh with the Committee. The fairness of the proposal is the thing that should count. The adage says, "The slave clings to his chains." If it had been left to the slaves slavery would, have never been abolished in America. 1 am here as the mouthpiece of my organization and of organized laboui in Wellington. Labour has been demanding a weekly day of rest since 1908. We hotel workers have been specially asking for it for the last seven years. This is not the first time by many that the principle has been before the House in Bill form. Mr. Fisher introduced a Sunday Labour Bill in 1007. He reintroduced it in 1909. Lengthy evidence was then taken on it. A Bill affecting us was introduced in 1910. Lengthy evidence was again taken on it. Again in 1912 further evidence was taken on the Bill, and again in 191.'! further evidence was taken on the Bill, and here we are still asking for the holiday. Twice now this Committee has recommended to the House that the Bill be passed. There is just one oilier objection that is being slated by opponents of the six-day week clause —it is to the effect that it is impossible in places where only one cook is employed. It is the same old objection that was raised when liist the half-holiday was proposed. The answer is that in any hotel where only one cook is employed she would be relieved on the day off either by the mistress or one of the other girls. Take a place employing only one cook, like the Thistle Inn in Wellington. As a plain matter of fact, for a year in Wellington hotel workers had one full Sunday a month off. It was managed all right. At the Thistle Inn the porter relieved the cook on the Sunday off. At a small hotel employing, say, only one or two hands the actual position is that the proprietor is as much a wage-worker as the other two hands. The wages of all four, the licensee, his wife, and two workers, come out of the business, and the position is that the licensee in actual fact does work just the same as employees. A small hotel does not do a large meal business ;if it did it would not be a small hotel. Nowadays the cook is relieved by her fellow-worker or the mistress. No expert worker is required : the smallness of the' business does not warrant such a worker. If the objection is heeded and smaller hotels are exempted, then the worker in such a place is punished merely because of the fact that her employer has not enough capital to engage in a bigger business. It would create unfair competition and enable the small hotelkeeper to get his profit not out of the business but of the sweating of the workers. On the same reasoning a small hotel should be allowed the privilege of working its one or two employees longer hours than the larger hotels. And now I want to deal specifically with the rest of the clauses of the Bill, and to suggest the amendments we desire as hotel workers. Take the first clause :It is unfair to us to put off the operation of the Bill till April, 1914; we suggest the Ist January, 1914. But for Mr. Massey's pledge to certain hotelkeepers the six-day Bill would be in operation now. The Minister of Labour during last session himself promised that the Bill would come into operation when His Excellency signed it. We have been asking for the Bill since before 1907. We lost it last year because the Minister wanted opportunity for further evidence. It was urged as a reason for not going on last session that the holiday would only be delayed nine months. The clause means a delay of one year and four months since the discussion last session. The next clause —clause 2 : We are doubtful if the definition will be held to mean what it says in the law-courts. If it does we are satisfied with it excepting in one respect. But we have had some sorry experience. I refer the Committee to section 2of the present Act. It reads, " ' Hotel ' means any premises in respect of which a publican's license is granted under the Licensing Act, 1908 ; and ' restaurant ' means any premises pother than a hotel) in which meals are provided and sold to the- general public for consumption on the premises, ami whether or not lodging is provided for hire, for the accommodation of persons who desire to lodge therein, and includes a private hotel, tea-room, and an oyster-saloon " Mr. Millar, the Minister of Labour, added the words, " and includes a private hotel " in the definition when his Bill was in Committee. He assured us, as did the Crown Law Draftsman, that the inclusion of these words would make every private hotel, in the commonplace acceptance of the term, a restaurant within the meaning of the Act. We were not satisfied. We asked for a more strict definition, and were again assured that our fears as to the definition were groundless. But what happened) The Labour Department, over which the Minister had control, was the very first to say that private hotels were not restaurants within the Act. As a matter of fact, it sent circulars to the various district Inspectors to warn them that private hotels were not covered in the definition. The irony of the position is that I warned the Minister that his own Department would lie the first to prove a flaw in the definition. The words "and includes a private hotel" did not make private hotels come within the Act. There have been two Supreme Court judgments on the point. The sense of these judgments was that, besides being a private hotel, there must be a regular restaurant business oarried on. ami that unless the private hotel regularly engaged in serving meals to outsiders other than boarders il was not a restaurant within the Act. And this despite the Minister's and Crown Law Draftsman's assurance that the definition meant, that a private hotel was a place that did the same business as a licensed hotel except that it did not retail liquor. It cost the Labour Department probably £50 to test the case. My point is that the position should be made clear in the Bill without the possibility of litigation on the matter. The private hotels in Wellington are all

83