Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/238

202 202 HARVARD LAW REVIEW Hours With regard to hours of work, the Court generally adheres to the Australian standard of forty-eight hours per week. Any overtime has to be paid for at higher rates; but there are some exceptions to the forty-eight-hour rule. Fewer hours have been prescribed where the occupation is very nerve-racking, where as in the case of the builders' labourers the men have to "foUow the job," and now in the case of imderground mines and smelters.^^ It may in- terest American readers to know that as to underground mines and smelting the Court availed itself of the reasoning of the Supreme Court of the United States in the constitutional case of Holden v. HardyP In that case a state statute Hmiting the hours in mines and smelters was upheld, notwithstanding the Fourteenth Amend- ment of the Constitution, because the state legislature had regarded the limitation as conducive to health and Hfe. The work was not only risky but also unhealthy. Lead poisoning and pneumonia were common. Special mention ought to be made here of the con- duct of the men at the Port Pirie smelters. The lead ore which comes from Broken Hill is smelted at Port Pirie, and the produce is sent during the war to the British government. The men were working seven shifts of eight hours, Sundays as well as ordinary days, and they had been for years seeking a six-day week on a rotation scheme; but they recognised that there was a shortage of men suitable for the smelters and that without the fifty-six-hour week the continuous process could not be kept up. So they asked me to postpone the boon of shortened hours till after the war. They did this as a gift to the nation for the purpose of the war, not under compulsion in the interests of the employers. On the other hand, the forty-eight-hour week is not a rigid rule for all occupations. Sometimes the Court has fijxed fifty-two hours where the nature of the trade required it, and where the operation has variety and is of an op>en air character, as in the case of certain carters and drivers.^" In the case of station hands (boundary riders, bullock drivers, and generally useful men employed by pastorahsts) ; it was found impracticable to set any definite limit 28 Broken Hill, lo Com. Arb. 155, 185-91 (1916). " 169 U. S. 366 (1898). »" Butchers, 10 Com. Arb. 496 (1916).