A CONTRAST IN FINES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 427, 9 February 1909, Page 6

A CONTRAST IN FINES.

On Saturday last we printed some comparative figures relating to fines inflicted, upon employers for various breaches of Arbitration Court awards in order ito show. • the severity of- .De, ' M'AetbUE'b. methods as compared "with the methods of the Arbitration Court. In :«ise-after case the.local Magistrate inflicted a fine of £10 on tho offending employer. There was nothing unusual about the cases; they were the usual charges of employing non-' unionists, of paying wages otherwise than in manner provided, of failure to indenture, apprentices, and of paying less than awavd, wages. None oi tho ofteuceswas serious, either in effect, or in intention. The whole batch of charges, in short, was the .ordinary collection, of irritating pinpricks which the Act enables the union secretaries to make the. regular accompaniment of industry. That is of course no reason why tbo employers should not be fined, the law beiijg what it is; what we wish to discover as the justification for the very sharp penalties dec.id.cd upon by the Magistrate. When counsol in one trivial case asked that a small fine.shoujd bs inflicted, and reminded De. M'Aethue of the comparative moderation of the fines inflicted in similar cases by tho Arbitration Court, the Magistrate said be had "also seen it reported that the Judge of the Arbitration Court said that if these fines did-not have the desired effect they would be raised considerably." It is of interest to note .that on the following day the Arbitration Court was sitting in Dunedin ' to, hear five cases against employers charged with various breaches of awards. > One case was ad-: journed. In another,, the case of a contractor who had failed" to pay his men the full wages due to them, the Court recorded a breach,; and announced that if the wages were paid by tho time the Court sat again in Dunedin only a nominal penalty would: be imposed. In each of two other cases—a coal company charged with having failed to pay the rate of wages fixed by award, and a bootmaker charged with employing a youth who was' hot indentured—the Court was content to record a breach and to order the defendant to pay costs. In the fifth case—that of a bootmaker charged with having committed a breach of the "preference" clauee—no breach was recorded. In view of the general moderation,of the Court, it is.difficult to understand how Dr. M'Arthtje can quote the Court in justification of his seventy, and employers hayo good reason to feel that the ,£lO penalties were excessive. These penalties are the more remarkable in view of the troatment that ia meted out td strikers. At Hastings on Wednesday last seventeen men who had. gone on strike at the Pakipaki freezing works were convicted and fined £l each. Two days later thirtyseven coal'truckors who had gone on strike at Kaitangata in August last were fined £30 in the aggregate, or about 16s. each. The disparity between these penalties and tho penalties imposed on employers by Dr.- M'Amhur last week is too extraordinary to bo overlooked. But there is something more to be noticed than the fact that a man may go on strike at a cost of £l while an omployer who commits oven a technical breach of an award is liable to be fined £10: something more oventhan the fact that there is no deterrent to strikers. It is very significant of the inevitable trend of the Act, with its bestowal upon trades-unionism of powere and privileges whioh no other organised or unorganised class of society could dream of obtaining, that an employer who omploys a non-union man should be considered to have committed an offence ten times greater than tho offence of a unionist who engages in a strike. No Act that was not a mere charter of dominance to trades-unionism could produce such a grossly, inoquitablo result as that.