§ Mr. ThorntonI beg to move Amendment No. 18, Clause 5, in page 6, line 23, to leave out from "Where" to "remuneration" in line 28 and to insert:
by reason of a diminution in the work provided for an employee by his employer (being work of a kind which under his contract the employee is employed to do) the employee's".The Amendment deals with a point raised in Committee by the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell). The purpose of Clause 5(2) is to define what we mean by "short-time". It is defined as occurring when an employee's remuneration for any week is less than half a week's pay.As drafted, the subsection relates to employees whose pay depends directly or indirectly on the number of hours for which they work, but it was pointed out in Committee that the pure piece-worker 1726 might be held to be excluded by this description because the pay of such a worker would be only indirectly related to the number of hours for which he worked. Because the Clause now defines short-time in terms of a drop of earnings, we no longer need any reference to hours in the preamble to subsection (2). Instead the Amendment says that when as a result of a reduction in work the employee's pay falls to less than half a week's pay, he will be on short-time. The expression "reduction in work" is brought in to cover time work and piece work alike.
We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing our attention to this matter and I hope that he will accept the Amendment.
§ Mr. Ronald BellI rise only to thank the hon. Gentleman for meeting this point.
§ Amendment agreed to.