WOMEN'S AND MEN'S HOURS UNDER OTHER LEGISLATION
Mines and Quarries
4. Under the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954, there are restrictions on the hours of work of women employed above ground at mines and quarries. The Department understands that the Ministry of Power has it in mind to enter into appropriate consultations with the organisations principally concerned about whether, and if so to what extent, the DEP's proposals indicated above should apply to them.
Shop Workers
5.
Sections 17, 19 and 22 of the Shops Act, 1950, restrict the working hours of men as well as women; the restrictions relate to Sunday work, the weekly half holiday, and meal intervals.
6. There seems no good reason why these restrictions on adult shop workers' hours should outlive the restrictions on women's hours in factories. There is no obvious reason to suppose that in the foreseeable future shop workers will be any more liable to exploitation than factory workers. Their right to be adequately paid for overtime is safeguarded by the collective bargaining system, reinforced in a large part of the retail distributive industry by the statutory Wages Council machinery. In the DEP's view the restrictions on adult workers' hours of work in shops should be removed.
7. The restrictions on the hours during which a shop may be open for trading are in the DEP's view quite a different matter from the restrictions affecting the hours of individual workers, and affected by different considerations. They are not within the scope of this paper.
Night Baking
8.
Under the Baking Industry (Hours of Work) Act, 1954, there are restrictions on night baking work both by men and women. Most women in baking are excluded from these particular restrictions because they are covered by the different restrictions in the Factories Act, 1961, the bakeries at which they work being "factories" as defined. If the Factories Act restrictions are abolished, either the women in question will have to be brought within the scope of the Baking Industry (Hours of Work) Act, so that the same restrictions will apply to both men and women, or alternatively the restrictions for both sexes will need to be abolished. The DEP is inclined to favour the latter course, bearing in mind the productivity and other considerations argued in the working party's report as grounds for abolition of restrictions.
9. An additional consideration is the anomalous situation that arises at establishments where plant cake baking has grown up as a parallel process to biscuit baking- in which no restrictions are placed on the employment of
men.
Automatic Sheet-Glass Works
10. The Hours of Employment (Conventions) Act 1936, restricts the hours of all persons who work in successive shifts in necessarily eontinuous operations in sheet-glass works. It appears doubtful whether there is anything so exceptional about the processes in such works as to justify preserving these restrictions as an isolated exception to the present move towards abolition of restrictions on the hours of adult workers.
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