FOUR-YEAR DISPUTE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 67, 20 March 1937, Page 12

FOUR-YEAR DISPUTE.

CONCILIATION SUCCEEDS. PARTIES WKRi: "MILKS APART." "The position appears to be unique, in that almost all the union's claims are agreed to by the respondent," said the Conciliation Commissioner, Mr. S. Ritchie, when the terms for a Canterbury metal workers' assistants' award were discussed in Conciliation Council in Christchurch this week. Mr. (i. T. Thurston, employees' agent, said the result was due to the lengthy discussion in the engineers' dispute, which took about four years to settle. He had suggested that metal workers' assistants should be brought under the engineers' award. "It must be gratifying," said the commissioner, "to know that the terms and conditions of the engineers' award have proved so acceptable. It is one of the best illustrations of the value of conciliation, and the result would not have been possible under any other system. At times the parties were miles apart, but they met time after time, going over the same points again and again with perfect good humour." "When you analyse it," said Mr. Thurston, "the engineers' agreement was really the outcome of the realisation by both parties of the march of the machine age."

Mr. F. X. Lawrence, an employers' assessor, suggested that he and Mr. Thurston should be awarded long service medals.