The Conciliation Council.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20623, 12 August 1932, Page 10

The Conciliation Council.

The settlement by the Conciliation Council of the dispute between the timber-yards workers and their employers, announced this morning, is welcome not merely because it makes for harmony in the timber industry but also because it should increase the prestige of the Couucil. Since compulsory arbitration was abolished, the proceedings of the Conciliation Council have been watched closely and critically and it is unfortunate that up to the present it has not been strikingly successful in bringing about agreements. It is even more unfortunate that its limited success should have given rise to attacks on the Conciliation Commissioner, whose'usefulness is necessarily restricted if the parties to the dispute fail to realise the heavy responsibility placed on them by the amended Act; Under the old system conciliation proceedings were usually an empty formality and the representatives of the employers and the employees have probably found some difficulty in adjusting themselves to new conditions. It is vitally important that they should do all they can to develop a technique of friendly discussion, for failure to reach agreement threatens some dangerous consequences. There may be industries where an merely creates undesirable rigidity; but in most industries it is not in the interests of either the workers or the employers that there should be no legally established scale of wages and hours of work. It is worth remembering, too, that if both workers and employers try to make full use of the conciliation process, industrial relations will be much more harmonious than they ever were under the old system. Compulsory arbitration usually led parties to disputes into extreme statements of their cases and so magnified differences that the awards imposed frequently satisfied no one. An agreement reaehed by friendly negotiation is much more valuable and much more likely to be respected than a settlement enforced by a third party.