Representation query

Press, 18 June 1982, Page 5

Representation query

The Arbitration Court reserved . its decision ■in Christchurch yesterday on whether a barrister, Dr D. L. Mathieson, was entitled to appear in the court on behalf of the Printing Trades union as respondent in an application by two companies for exemption from, the printing trades award. Dr Mathieson was crossexamining the first witness for the applicant companies, Smiths City Market, Ltd, and Print Marketing Consultants, Ltd, when a member of the Court. Mr D. Jacobs, raised the question whether Dr Mathieson was entitled to appear. Mr Jacobs' also asked whether the application should have come to the Court in the form that it had.

The advocate for the applicant companies, Mr N. McPhail, said that the applL, cants objected to the appearance for the union of counsel.. "We feel the matter arises from arbitration proceedings and that these matters are best settled between lay people,” he said.

Dr Mathieson submitted that the proceedings were not arbitration proceedings, so that the bar under section

54 (4) of the Industrial Relations Act did not apply.

Dr Mathieson said that the printing trades award had already been made and the case before the Court was an application for exemption. The Court was not being asked to decide what anaward should be. What was before the Court was a dispute involving interpretation, he said.

Chief Judge J. R. P. Horn, in reserving a decision on the eligibility of legal counsel to act, said that this was one of several issues involved which had been of concern to the Court for some time. Another concern was that the conciliation council had refused to strike out the applicants from the award.

. This was wrong because it was the conciliator himself who had the prerogative to strike out parties to an award. The Court did not know whether the refusal to strike out a part to the award was a valid one. The Court also had to decide whether the proceedings before it were arbitration proceedings, the Judge'said.

Before the Court was adjourned Mr McPhail said that the applicants sought exemption from the award

because they felt that proper coverage for employees in their advertising departments was the retail (nonfood) award. A witness, Mr Brian Philip Williams, said that of the four employees in the Smiths City Market advertising department of which he was manager, only one was in a union, and that was the Shop Assistants union. Neither the Printing Trades Union nor the Shop Assistants Union had made any approach to recruit the other three since they began work at the start of the year. Mr Williams said he felt that the employees were covered by the retail non-food award.

McKenzie and Willis, Ltd, had also applied for exemption from the award, but the Printing Trade Union offered no opposition to the application and the Court therefore granted exemption. An application for exemption by Keystore Wholesale Groceries was withdrawn.

With Chief Judge Horn on the bench were Messrs Jacobs and J. B. Walton. Mrs M. Hilston, secretary of the Canterbury branch of the Shop Assistants Union, appeared as an interested party.