TRADE AND LABOUR NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 62, 13 March 1919, Page 11

TRADE AND LABOUR NOTES.

(By INDUSTRIAL TRAMP.) UNION MEETINGS FOR THE WEEK. This Evening, March i;;--B.iilermr.kers, Stonemasons. Printers' Machinists. Furniture Tr.idi's' Committee. Friday. March 14—Curriers. Slondav. March 17—Engineers' Branch No. 1. Furniture Trades. Hairdressers. plasterers. Cutters and I'resspis. Tuesday. March 18— Building Trades' (Picnic Commit't-c. Wednesday. March 19—Bool makers' Commute*. DELAYED DECISION:-. After waiting for nearly five weeks from the date of hearing, the building trades, eoachworkcrs, and chemical manure workers of Auckland have received the decisions of the Arbitration Court in their respective applications, and increases of a varying nature have been awarded. The increases come into force on March 31st. During the period of waiting, the workers concerned waxed very restive, as after hearing the opinion of the Court relative to the increases n«ked for on February Oth. which clearly indicated that under the amendments of last session of Parliament, the Court had no option but to -rrant an increase of wages, where it could be shown that tlie price of commodities had risen since the last award was delivered. In the face of this expression of the mind of the Court, it takes live weeks to give tbe decision, and the increase, instead of being retrospective, i« post dated some three weeks, so that the workers will not rpceivr- their increased pay until the first pay day in April (tlie sth). ' It is no wonder that the workers are losing" their limited faith in the usefulness of tbe Arbitration Act, and have started to seek relief under the Labour Disputes Investigation Act, as I>eing much speedier in results. In delivering judgment of these applications, His Honor has made some ■ interesting statements that have been subjected to much criticism in different quarters. He says: —"In the past the Court has not acceded to demands of workers to increase wages in the same ratio as the increased cost of living, as the Court considered the increased cost of living was mainly attributable to the war, nnd therefore that workers, or at least those who were receiving substantially more than a mere living wage, could and should bear a portion of the burden imposed by the war upon the community -generally, and ought not to expect to be fully exonerated from their share of such burdens, which could only be .lone by throwing an increased burden upon other members of the community, who were already bearing their fair share, of such burden. In the result, as ap-i pears from statistics, notwithstanding several increases granted by the Court during the war to workers in different industries, they are now in a worse position financially than they were at the outbreak of the war, inasmuch as their real, as distinguished from their nominal, wages have been reduced. The Court, however, interprets the recent Statute to mean that in the afbsence of any countervailing consideration —which was not shown to exist in any of the cases before the Court—the wages of workers should for the future be increased in correspondence with the increase in the cost of living.'' This interesting pronouncement tbflt the Court in the past has been of the opinion that the workers should bear their fair share in the burdens cast upon the community by the war, leads one to ask the question, '"Have all sections of the community borne their fair share of the burden?" Fair-minded critics have long advanced the opinion that it is easier for a man on a salary of say £300 a year to bear his 6hare of the high cost of living than a worker on £3 or £4 per week. Th e man on the higher pay has in very many instances benefited by the higher war"prices, and the farmer and the merchant has never in the history of the Dominion had snch good times as during the paßt four and a-half years. In a leader on "Industrial Cnree*" the Lyttelton "Times" of February 2oth says:—"To begin with, the Government will have to exercise some effective control over prices and profits arising from the war. Then iwe could have substantial reduction of the general income tax, which for the most part filters down to the consumers. It is still not too late—they are doing it in France—to capture some of "the enormous fund of profits arising from the war. A sensible form of taxation would bring a great deal of relief and diffuse justice where injustice now reigns." This puts my contention in a nutshell. The Government have not seized the opportunity to cope with the situation in a proper manner, and for this omission there are going to be big changes at the General Election. THE WHITLEY COUNCILS. Horn time to time we read cables and reports from Britain, in which the work of the Whitley Councils is mentioned. For short these are known as the Whitley Reports, from the fact that the F.t. Hon ,f. H. Whitley, senior member for Halifax, is chairman of the committee. For a time tho British Government went very slow in using the industrial councils. Jt even refused in one or two cases to use the machinery in its own departments. There is now a change and the councils are being used for the Government Industrial Departments. The British Ministry of Labour expressed this official view of the Industrial Councils some time ago: — "The primary object of the industrial councils is to regularise the relations between employers and employed. But they will serve another urgent need, and in so doing will give to workpeople a status in their respective industries that they have not had hitherto. There is a large body of problems which belong both to industry and to politics. They ■belong to politics, because the community is responsible for their solution, and the State must act if no other provision is made. They belong to industry, because they can be solved only by tho knowledge and experience of the people actually engaged in industry. Such problems" are the regularisation of employment, industrial training, utilisation of inventions, industrial research, the improvement of design and quality, legislation affecting workshop conditions—all questions which have hitherto keen left in the main to employers, but which in Teaiity constitute an important common interest on the basis of which all engaged in an industry can meet." WAGES IN BRITAIN. Tbe extent of the increases in the wages paid during the war in Great Britain in the industries and trades, for which statistics are available, was shown in the "Labour Gazette," published by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, in its issues of January, 191S, and November, IMS. From these -guree it appears that the wages iv re-