The Dominion. TUESDAY; JANUARY. 21, 1908. A WARNING AND A REBUKE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 100, 21 January 1908, Page 6

The Dominion. TUESDAY; JANUARY. 21, 1908. A WARNING AND A REBUKE.

During the recent controversy that arose out of the conflict between the Arbitration Court's award upon the coal-mining industry in Westport and the Act which Parliament passed last session for the purpose of enforcing the' "bank-to-bank" principle, we did not hear much about the Court's view of the principle at stake in the matter. The Court, however, has taken occasion to let its views be known. To the award recently delivered in settlement of the dispute between the Granity miners and. the "Westport Coal Company, the following notable memorandum has been attached: — ,

"The Court has reserved power to itself to vary all or any of the provisions of this award in the event of any chango being made by legislation in any of tho\conditions regulated by tho award. This will cnablo tho Court to remedy tho hardship that might otherwise result from Parliament altering—as it has dono in some cases—some of tho conditions of an award while leaving tho parties hound by all tho other 5 provisions of tho award. Tho Court has 110 desiro to suggest that Parliament should not exorciso its privilege of legislating with regard to all or any of tho matters that may be doalt with in an award of tho 1 Court, but it soems desirable to point out that if an award fixes the hours of work and wages in connection with any particular industry, any alteration in tho hours of work really means ail alteration in wages in all cases where the wage fixed is a daily or weekly one, and that in such a Case Parliament, while professing to deal only with hours of work, is really legislating with regard to wages."

Although conceived by the Court in' uo spirit of contentiousness, hut only in anxiety to safeguard industrial justice, this memorandum amounts to a very proper rebuke to reckless and hasty legislation. In the case involved in the controversy, Parliament had varied the existing award by shortening the working day without decreasing the daily wage of the miners. As *a result the scale of pay prescribed by the Court as the outcome of its investi gations was summarily varied, to the detriment of the employers, by a Parliament that knew nothing whatever of tho conditions which govern the industry, and which tlie Court was created to investigate. Under the working of the memorandum Parliament may vary any award that it' chooses, and yet not wholly deprive the Court of means of restoring the equilibrium that has been disturbed. There is thus a fair prospect that the Court may be able to keep to itself the right to make awards—a right which was created for exercise by it, and by it alone. There is a fair prospect, that is to say, that the sectional interests and political stratagems that move so many of our legislators will be prevented from doing injustice in a region in which the custody of justice has been placed in the hands of a special tribunal. Tor this, those who have any proper sense of the sanctity of our laws will be duly grateful. •The Arbitration Act may or may not be a beneficial law, but it is the law, and any interference with its fair administration cannot be too strongly condemned. We have said that it is satisfactory to find the Court determined to conserve the principles of justice that Parliament treated with such regrettable disrespect last session. It is anything but pleasant, however, to find that tlie Court should have thus to arm itself for the protection of industry against ill-advised parliamentary action. The Court declares that ithas no desire to suggest" that Parliament should limit its paramount privileges, but we think otherwise, for which we get out fully, pa

December 21 last. We said then, and we still think, that the Act of last session that caused the trouble was an improper and vicious interference with the freedom of the Court ; to discharge the functions delegated to it by Parliament, and that the principle thus introduced is as pregnant of danger to workers as to employers. The concluding sentence of the Court's new defensive clause bears out the warning in our previous article that. Parliament had taken " a first step towards the statutory fixing of hours and wages and industrial conditions generally." Perhaps the Court's action may convince the friends of • arbitration that the blow struck at our industrial legislation was .no less dangerous than the blow that would be struck at our. in-' Stitutions of justice if Parliament were to enact that our courts of law should invariably give such and such a decision, irrespective of the evidence and the merits of the case. '