The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1920. THE ARBITRATION SYSTEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 293, 8 December 1920, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1920. THE ARBITRATION SYSTEM.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

Our system of compulsory conciliation and arbitration has always had its critics, and it is natural that the recent trend of events should have encouraged them and added to their numbers. The current issue of "Accounting and Commerce," the official organ of the New Zealand Society of Accountants, contains a sharp and lengthy attack on the system, written with a good deal of ability but with rather more acorbity than is nccesssary. "The cost of living goes gaily mounting up, for reasons which are sufficiently plain to all but bankers, politicians, and newspaper editors" is a cheap jibe that adds nothing to the discussion. Apparently the editor of "Accounting and Commerce" is an exception. The writer's case is that the. compulsory system has failed. Industrial questions, he contends, do not lend themselves to the procedure of a court. In ordinary cases the judge has laws of the land and fixed principles to guide him, but he cannot act on such lines in industrial questions. The arbitration machinery "simply acts as a buffer between the parties, disguising tho underlying play of economic forces." It can split a difference or interpret a voluntary award, but it cannot solve "bed-rock problems." A moro serious objection i_ that as time goes on the adjustment of wages becomes more and more difficult, until in the end compulsory arbitration goes beyond defining the limits within which competition shall work, and supplants competition. The well-known contention is repeated that raising of wages means higher prices, and higher prices compel the Court to increase wages again, and so on. The conclusion of the writer is that the sooner the arbitration system "is relegated to tho scrap-heap, and voluntary conciliation introduced in its place, the better."

Tho cause of compulsory arbitration is not going to be advanced by pretending that it is perfect, or anywhere near perfect, and we do not suppose that any thinking Xew Zealander would claim that it was. But for all his complaints about tho Act we imagine the working man would be loth to see tho system abolished. The writer in "Accounting and Commerce" is all for voluntary conciliation, and notes with satisfaction "the consistent success and growth of the conciliation provisions of the Act." We share his satisfaction; it is better ,that disputes should be settled in this stage than that they should go to the Court. But surely he knows that settlements made by the Conciliation Commissioner go to the Court to be made formally binding on both parties, and that in some cases most of the points will be settled at the conciliation hearing, and the few that remain in dispute will go to the Court for settlement. The argument that the advancing of wages and general interference with industry increases the cost of living in an exasperating race between wages and that cost, and that the logical outcome will be the general supplanting of competition, applies also to voluntary settlements, with the alternative of strikes. Labour would not be prevented from advancing its demands because there was no compulsion. The employing class would still have to meet thos<j demands, and the absence of an authority with power to arbitrate, with all the prestige of the Arbitration Court, and to impose its decision with the force of law, would inevitably produce more strikes than we have now. Our system has not prevented strikes, but it has certainly reduced their number to a minimum. It is true that the law has often been flouted by workers and that the law has not always punished the offenders, but these occurrences have been few compared with the vast number of cases in which awards of the Court have been obeyed. Are we justified in abolishing a court which has worked for peace and whose decisions have been generally respected, because in some cases these decisions have been disregarded? We may point out that this critjc is not accurate in his facts. He makes much of the refusal of the Court to make an award in the farming industry, and says that the industries connected with primary production "are outside the jurisdiction of the Court altogether." This is not strictly correct. Shearers work or have worked under a binding award, and the Court recently fixed the hours and wages of dairy factory employees. But this is a side issue. The main point is that the system of compulsory arbitration has on the whole been beneficial. Jt has given the worker the means of j improving his lot, made awards binding, provided both sides with the opportunity of appealing-to the law, and steadied the movements of industry. Would the worker be willing to exchange the system for one In which his only remedy if an employer infringed an agreement would be to strike? The present system may be improved, but it is too firmly rooted in the industrial life of the country to be torn up and cast aside.