ARBITRATION TO GO.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1925, Page 15

ARBITRATION TO GO.

DRASTIC CHANGES MOOTED. COMMISSION TO ACT. N.S.W. LEGISLATION. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 9. Drastic changes in the arbitration system in Xew South 'Wales will be made by the Arbitration Amendment Bill, introduced into the' Legislative Assembly this week.

It will abolish the Arbitration Court and the Board of Trade, and these will be replaced by an industrial commission, the chairman of which must be a barrister of H\e years' standing, or an attorney with a record of seven j'ears. Conciliation committees will be appointed for each industry, and will comprise representatives of the employers and employees, with a paid chairman.

The Industrial Commission will consist of the chairman, representatives of employers and employees, aud will deal with questions such as declaration of the living wage for all industries, and. those which extend beyond the limits of any one industry. Conciliation committees will examine exhaustively conditions in the various industries, including apprenticeship, and the chairman will have a casting vote. Only the chairman will receive a salary, the other representatives being paid out of pocket expenses. The Industrial Commission will have the responsibility of deciding matters about which the committees have been unable to reach a conclusion. It will also be a court of appeal from the decisions of the committees.

One of the main features of the bill, however, is that it provides absolute preference to unionists. Government industries will be compelled to pay tiie Bame wage and provide the same conditions of employment as Government employees in private industries. The Industrial Commission will also have the power to deprive a union of access to the Commission if it is satisfied that the union is instigating or aidinw a strike.

Public servants and rural workers will be brought within the scope of the new nreasure, one clause of which makes it an offenre for employers to penalise their employees by reason of their association with the union. No lawyers will be allowed to appear before N the commission or the committees as representatives of either side unless by aoreement of the parties interested.