The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 1959. The Milk Dispute

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28794, 15 January 1959, Page 8

The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 1959. The Milk Dispute

The Acting-Minister of Agriculture (Mr Boord) is to be commended for intervening in the Hawke’s Bay town milk dispute. By threatening to cancel the Hawke’s Bay producers’ licence to manufacture casein if milk normally required for town use is diverted to the factory, the Minister has shown that he will not tolerate unethical, inconsiderate methods of forcing a settlement of the producers’ claims. All sensible citizens will support Mr Boord in his statement that the waste of milk needed by Najfier and Hastings consumers cannot be countenanced. Mr Boord is wise, however, to defer replying fully to the producers’ threats until after the president and secretary of their national federation (Messrs J. J. Maher, MJ*., and V. S. Lynskey) have visited Hawke’s Bay. It is to be hoped that Messrs Maher and Lynskey can prevail'on the producers to abandon their irresponsible tactics and cooperate in national efforts to remedy their grievances by less obnoxious and less selfish methods.

Messrs Maher and Lynskey have made public a temperate statement of New Zealand town milk producers’ complaints. It shows that a decision on prices has been delayed by the Government’s unwillingness to accept recommendations by the New Zealand Milk Board (the statutory authority for administering milk supplies), and by the producers’ dissatisfaction with price calculations linked with the dairy industry’s guaranteed price system. Messrs Maher and Lynskey have listed a series of questions which, they say, the Government has not answered satisfactorily. These questions raise important issues of economic and administrative

policy. Among them is a request to know whether the Government will accept the suggestion of the Town Milk Producers’ Federation that the whole matter should be submitted to arbitration, the findings of which would bind both Government and producers. The secretary of the Hawke’s Bay producers’ company (Mr C. W. Beuth) has claimed that the Government is “ frightened to allow arbitra- “ tion . . . because arbitration “ might decide in favour of “ the producers ”, Probably a better course than arbitration would be for the Government to arrange for an independent report on the producers’ claims. But this would take time; and the present dispute must be ended quickly, before it can spread to any other sections of industry. Though nothing should deter the Government from dealing with the Hawke’s Bay dispute firmly, decisively, and swiftly, the producers are justified, unhappily, in thinking that it applies one rule of conduct to employers and another to trade unionists. Mr Beuth has already pointed this out; but he has castigated Mr Boord unfairly for the Government’s default in the dairy workers’ dispute. The blame for that default lay with the Minister of Labour (Mr Hackett). Mr Boord, who had no legal responsibility to act in the dairy workers’ dispute, is now constrained to pursue a course quite contrary to that taken by a senior colleague in the Cabinet. One may sympathise with Mr Boord in his dilemma; but the Government itself set a bad example. What is important to New Zealand’s welfare is that there should be an end to disregard for normal business ethics, consumers’ interests, and. the law.