ARBITRATION COURT.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 61, 10 September 1908, Page 2

ARBITRATION COURT.

[press association.]

WELLINGTON, yesterday

At the Arbitration Court to-day, Mr Reardon, secretary of the Laborers' Union, took exception to a new departure by the Court in stipulating that if a strike occurs all parties are released from the award. He contended it was unfair to the workers and quoted instances of small alleged strikes at Wanganui and in Wellington, of which the union had no knowledge, yet which would have affected the whole of the laborers under the award. Judge Sim asked if the Laborers' Union was not affiliated to the Wellington Trades and Labor Council, which had upheld-'the bakers' strike. Mr Reardon said it was, and that it appeared necessary to help the strikers at the time. They endeavored to bring the strike to an end and were defeated.

His Honor: Why did not the Trades and Labor Council pass resolutions disapproving of the strike instead T)f approving it? Your leaders want to have arbitration and strikes too. If yen can't get a thing by-arbitra-tion you strike. That is simply the position at present. Your union may not be directly responsible for one •small strike, but indirectly they are responsible -by the^action of the union leaders in approving of strikes." If any workers go out on strike instead of obeying the law, they break it.

Mr Reardon : We claim to withhold our labor if we think fit. That has been recognised in British law since 1825.

His Honor : And yem must do it in concert in order to get by coercion something you cannot get by arbitration, y At the same sitting, Mr Pryor, secretary of the Employers' Association, applied for the exemption of public bodies employing general laborers from industrial awards. He urged they were really Government bodies, and had no business in the ordinary sense of the word, and moreover were influenced by elections in a way that prejudiced ordinary employers, and led them io grant ridiculous rates. On the other hand they sometimes, in periods of distress, found temporary work for unemployed, and they could not do this if bound by an award.

The Judge said he could not decide such a question off hand. Any change would reqxiire careful considderation. In- the meantime local bodies would have to be parties to the laborers' award.