WHEN UNIONS CITE EMPLOYERS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1021, 10 January 1911, Page 5

WHEN UNIONS CITE EMPLOYERS.

, .A. BURDENSOME. TASK. The labour union officials entrusted .with the duty of compiling a list of proposed parties to an award have a somewhat difficult. Failure to compile a complete list entails the necessity of taking separate proceedings to havo each employer whose name, has been committed joined as a party to the award. In view of this prospective disability it is .not strange that the list of parties cited when a new award is being sought is usually as complete'as it is possible to make it. Sometimes the result is a little odd. Tho list of employers cited in connection with tho carpenters' and joiners' demand for ■ a new award includes tho names 6f a number who aro only slightly connected, in" their business operations, with the carpentering trade. Painters, plumbers, plnsterers, cabinetmakers, and various other business men who occasionally employ carpenters or joiners, are cited as well-as builders who employ these tradesmen habitually. This is necessary, as tho law stands* in order that tho award may havo universal application throughout tho Wellington district. There are other names embodied iii the list, however, whoso presence cannot bo explained in this way. One is the name of a dead man, another that of a bankrupt who has given up,business, and still another is the name of a man who has abandoned building in order to keep a hotel. Mr. 0. Blethcrwick, district secretary of tho Carpenters' Union, expressed tho opinion to a reporter yesterday that the obligation imposed on tho union of citing each employer separately was as unnecessary as it was vexatious. Why, ho asked, should not tho award simply lie lr.adc legally cnforccablo upon all employers in tho district concerned, just as it was in the ca6e of workers?