“Not Bound By Ruling Rates”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31075, 2 June 1966, Page 3

“Not Bound By Ruling Rates”

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 1. The Railways Industrial Tribunal could make principal orders where the wage rates fixed would be in excess of average ruling rates, a Full Court decided in a judgment delivered today. The Court was asked to rule on the matter in a case stated by the Tribunal.

The Court comprised the Chief Justice (Sir Richard Wild), Mr Justice Turner and Mr Justice McCarthy. At the hearing, Mr J. D. Dalgety, with him Mr M.

Pickering, appeared for the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and the Solicitor-General, Mr J. C. White, Q.C., with him Mr G. S. Orr, for the General Manager of Railways. The case arose from two applications before the tribunal in July last year, first for an increase in tradesmen’s and mechanics’ rates to provide a 25 per cent margin over labourers, and an increase in the skilled labourers’ rate to provide a 7.5 per cent margin over the labourers’ rate. “If the tribunal is tendered or obtains information as to the results of a relevant ruling rates survey, it would require to have regard to that information. But the weight it gives to it is entirely a matter for the tribunal," the Chief Justice said.

In a separate judgment, Mr

Justice McCarthy said he refused to accept a recommendation of the Royal Commission on State Services, 1961 that, subject to certain gratii cations, wage and salary rates in the State services should, where possible, be fixed at a level comparable with current remuneration received by those doing broadly comparable work in outside employment.

After that recommendation, amendments were made to legislation governing the various tribunals concerned with rates in the services. The Government Railways Amendment Act, 1962, added a new section providing for an annual ruling rates survey and directing the consequences which such surveys were to have in relation to the wages of railway employees. “It is not for us to say

whether the tribunal’s deci sion or those applications, or’ indeed, its reasons for its decision, were in the final result right or wrong,” his Honour said. *

“This is not an appeal. An* appeal does not lie to this Court from a decision of thetribunal. Our task is confined to answering questions of law submitted to us. Only in this way can the statutory independence of the tribunal be observed. “Is the tribunal, when making a principal order, required to take into account the remits of a ruling rates survey?

“As a matter of law, in my view, the tribunal is not required to do so. But it may. have regard to the results of such surveys if properly brought to its notice. “The conclusion that the Legislature intended the results of the survey to be at least an important considera-' - tion, is inescapable. But that,, of course, does not entail that it must be treated as the only consideration, or the dominant one, or indeed that it is not open to the tribunal to hold that the other permitted considerations outweigh it, not withstanding its importance.”