WAGES INCREASE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 164, 12 July 1940, Page 8

WAGES INCREASE.

GENERAL ORDER SOUGHT. APPLICATION BY UNION. (By Telegraph.— Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The hearing of the application by the New Zealand Painters and Decorators' Federation for a general order under the Kates and Wages Emergency Regulations 1910. fixing the rates of wages in industry owing to the increase in the cost of living, was commenced in the Arbitration Court to-day.

Mr. Robinson, of Dunedin, presented a long written statement 011 behalf of the workers. He submitted that the taxation provisions in the Budget made it imperative that the purchasing power given in the Court's standard wage pronouncement of 1937 should be restored to the workers. The employers are represented by Mr. D. I. Macdonald, of Christchnrch, who will also wesent a written case.

In his statement. Mr. Robinson said the Court had received authority from the Legislature under the Rates of Wages Emergency Regulations to amend by general order the provisions of all awards and industrial agreements as far as they determined the rates of remuneration. as it thought just and equitable. 111 making the general order the Court was required to take into account (a) the economic and financial condition affecting trade and industry in New Zealand; (b) the cost of living; (c) any rise or fall in the cost of living since the making of any previous order under the regulations; and (d) any other relevant considerations.

It was gratifying to find, added Mr. Robinson, that the employers recognised that some increase should be made in the existing rates of wacres. The fact of their joining in an application to the Legislature to give, the Court special powers to amend awards and agreements by general order must be interpreted as an admission on their part that some increase in the. existing rates of wagerwas due. The admission went further, for it contained a suggestion that the matter was of too urgent a nature to be dealt with by the ordinary method of increasing wage rates as ne.w awards were being made; but that it should be done quickly by general order so that the rates of remuneration in all awards, and industrial agreements, current and expired, should be Increased simultaneously to the end that, in face of rising prices, wages would still have the purchasing power they had in September, 1037, when the last standard wage pronouncement was made. Several important instances in which the employers had increased wage ratc.s of their own accord without waiting for the Court order were cited bv Mr. Robinson.