The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1929. AN UNFORTUNATE BLUNDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 40, 16 February 1929, Page 8

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

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1929. AN UNFORTUNATE BLUNDER.

For the cause that lack* assistance, For the urone that need* resistance For the future in the distance, Ami the good that we can do.

In November. 1927. a number of influential employers, led by Sir Alfred Mond (now Lord Melchett), decided to issue an invitation to the General Council of the Trades Union Congress to meet them and discuss with them tee possibility of ensuring industrial peace for the future. The Council accepted the invitation, the conference was duly held, and in July, 1928. an interim report was issued embodying the tentative conclusions Teached. To-day we learn that the National Confederation of Employers and the Federation of British Industries have sent a joint letter to the secretary of the Trades Union Congress informing him that they cannot accept the proposals endorsed by the Mond Conference.

Naturally this Conference produced a favourable impression on the general public, and raised hieh hopes of a permanent cessation of industrial warfare at Home. This definite repudiation of the Mond Report, therefore, will come as a great -hock to the public mind, and though the employer? have invited the representatives of the unions to meet them again, and to reopen these discussions, the unionists are said to be '•bitterly disappointed" at the failure of the en.plovers to trrasp thLs

great opportuntiy for securing permanent industrial peace.

Thp more closely we .-xarnine the work done by the Mond Conference and the character of its interim report, the more difficult it becomes t<> und» i r>tand the action of the employers. Two general resolutions were passed, one recogni-ing the Trade Unions a.s the spokesmen of Labour, and congratulating them on the good wurk that they have done in the cause of industrial peace; the other depreeatins and eondemnin? anything in the nature of "victimisation" subsequent to a strike. It wa.s then decided to establish a National Industrial Council, consisting on the one hand of Labour delegates selected by the unions, on the other of an equal number of representatives nominated by the Federation of British Industries and the National Confederation of Employers' organisations. . The' function of this National Council, representing the whole working economic system, would b-> to hold quarterly meetings for the discussion of industrial questions, to set up a Standing Committee for the appointment of Joint Conciliation Boards, and "to establish and direct machinery for continuous investigation into industrial problems."

It' would be difficult to over-praise the efforts made by the Mond Conference to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the problem- that it handled. Lord Melehett himself regarded the appointment of Joint Conciliation Boards as epoch-makine. and even declared that if -uch an authoritative body had been in existence in Britain in 1926 the prolonged and deva.-tatinsr coal dispute, with all its disastrous consequences, would have been successfully averted. But the purposes of the Mond Conference went far beyond the relatively narrow limits indicated in the interim report. Its ultimate object was to be the "rationalisation'' of indu.-try, that is, its organisation on rational lines in accordance with the modern tendency toward combination, and co-operation, always keeping in view the necessity for increasing industrial efficiency and "the raising of the standard of living: of the people." Now, for reasons that we do not pretend to understand, the employers have administered a blunt rebuff to the unions, they have shaken public confidence in the goodness of their intentions, and in so doing they may have postponed indefinitely the Ion? looked for coming of industrial unity and peace.