TRAFFIC OFFICER APPOINTMENT

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24882, 23 May 1946, Page 6

TRAFFIC OFFICER APPOINTMENT

QUESTION FOR DISPUTES COMMITTEE UNION’S REPLY TO MAYOR “The Local Body Officers’ Union did not give its collaboration to the statement by the Mayor (Mr E. H. Andrews) that the deliberations of the disputes committee would not affect the appointment of Mr C. S. Nicholson as Chief Traffic Inspector; the Mayor’s statement is simply wishful thinking,” said the secretary of the union (Mr D. F. Ayers) in a statement yesterday replying to,Mr Andrews’s announcement that the City Council had agreed to the setting up of a disputes committee to decide whether the council had committed a breach of the award in appointing Mr Nicholson. “We note with great interest the Mayor’s attempt to shift his ground,” said Mr Ayers. “It seems that the Mayor wishes the community to believe that the council is the last authority in this matter, and that any decision is made on its own terms. The Mayor appears to forget that his council is only one of the two parties to the agreement concerned, and the dispute which has arisen out of it. If the union meets the council on the matter, the issue, to use the Mayor’s own statement, will be whether or not the council committed a breach of the agreement in making the present appointment. The Mayor must understand that the council and the union will be obliged to abide by the decision. The union has created no dispute on the matter of the preference clauses in their relation to future awards; if the council, by the Mayor’s statement, is creating one that is a separate matter and has no relation to the present dispute." He recalled that on February 18, the union gave the council one last chance to meet in disputes committee, and the Mayor stated that the position would be anomalous if the case was submitted to a disputes committee and the decision went against the council when a man had already been appointed. The union wondered how the Mayor could make such a statement when the council had the opportunity of meeting the union before the appointment was made, and also could have referred the matter to a disputes committee before Mr Nicholson commenced his duties. “As the ‘offer’ on the part of the Mayor is a reply to the union’s letter tabled on February 18, we naturally look askance at the whole affair and ask him how he expects the union to meet the council under such illogical conditions.” said Mr Ayers. “Apparently the Mayor and his council have not realised that their procrastination has brought about a breach of the award which cannot be disputed. Perhaps the Mayor thinks that industrial agreements registered with the Arbitration Court are ‘scraps of paper’ to be torn up on any suitably inconvenient occasion.”