The Press Monday, June 1, 1931. The Wages Order.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20251, 1 June 1931, Page 10

The Press Monday, June 1, 1931. The Wages Order.

The General Order on wages issued today by the Arbitration Court is not merely an industrial award but a survey, eight or nine thousand words long, of the general state of trade and industry. The Order itself is that all rates of remuneration fixed by the Court shall be reduced by ten per cent, except for apprentices (male and female), flax-mill employees (in the Wellington Industrial District), contract workers whose contracts are still running and whose awards contain a provision excluding increased rates, and any workers or classes of workers whose wages, if reduced ten per cent.-, would fall below the minimum rates fixed by any Act of Parliament. In the case of workers whose wages are calculated on a monthly basis the Order operates as from to-day; in all other ca 3as from Monday next (June Sth). The Memorandum consists of a very fuL. statement by the Judge, of a briefer supporting statement by the employers' representative, and of a firmly but not - violently dissenting statement by the representative of the workers—all making a pronouncement of such length that it is impossible to traverse it fi'oin .end to end in a single article. Fortunately it is not necessary. The factual background-—his-torical, legal, and economic—is filled in so clearly by the Judge that only its most prominent features need bo especially referred to. One—and it is by far the most important—is that the Act required the Court, if it was appealed to, to make an award based primarily on the present economic and financial situation. The Court's function in the past has usually been to consider first the cost of living and living standards. Its duty now is to adjust wages to economic possibilities. Though it has wisely, and very earnestly, tried to maintain a reasonable standard of living, the Act was an instruction by the Legislature to make an award that industry could bear. His Honour's second point—he makes it only to avoid misunderstanding, since the Act already had taken it for granted—is- that an award is not a contract, but merely a statement setting out the minimum terms and conditions upon which a contract may be made. In Australia as well as in New Zealand award rates have frequently been varied without any suggestion that these legislative adjustments involved a repudiation of contract. It was necessary to make these points, because the sting of sacrifice is injustice; but it was no part of the Court's duty to weigh them in the balance against the facts of industry and trade. That duty began, and ended with." Parliament when it was considering. Part 11. ,oi the Finance I Act The Court's duty—we are saying it over and over again, but it is vital —was to decide what adjustments in wages must be made to meet a drop in industry's returns of more than thirty per cent. Above all it had to consider what adjustment had to be mdde to give a reasonable chance of recovery to farmers. The best the farmer can look forward to, certainly the most on which it is even reasonably prudent to depend, is a general stabilisation of prices at something like twenty-five per cent, above the 1914 level. But while his income at present is actually less than it was in 1914, he is paying fifty per cent.'more for everything (including labour) that he has to bny. And the only reply to this was, first, that the farmer's chief burden is the high price of land and money, and second, that lower wages mean lower purchasing power'. If the first were the truth—as muoh of the truth as is necessary to justify the present scale of wages—everyone who has walked off his farm during the last twelve months I has done ; so because would sooner have nothing at all than half the value of their debt. If the second were the truth the Court had merely to increase wages to bring back prosperity. But the fact is that neither argument i'is relevant. AltHough the Coiirt was asked to look into the general eoonomio position, it was to do so only in order to decide whether trade and industry, as matters stand to-day, can bear the present burden, of wages. It had neither the authority nor the power to adjust land values and interest rates, nor may authority and power ever be given to it. Land values have dropped, and are dropping; interest will drop as the competition for money becomes less keen; but neither one fall nor the other, nor both combined, can give the relief that industry requires now if the general situation is to be saved. A compulsory reduction in wages is a desperate expedient which only a desperate situation can - justify. It is, however, an immediate expedient, .and if the relief is passed on—the CourJ condemns any attempt to use the re-, duotion to recoup past losses—there is no reason why the' standard of living should fall. 'ln any case, the Coiirt was not asked to protect, or maintain, or stabilise the standard of living. It was asked to protect industry, so far as a wages award may, from such a calamity as would leave hundreds of workers without any living at all.