THE ARBITRATION COURT UNDER FIRE

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 298, 10 September 1921, Page 9

THE ARBITRATION COURT UNDER FIRE

FARMEES’ UNION.DISCUSSION. ' (From Our Own Correspondent.) Palmerston North, September 9. At the meeting of the Wellington Provincial Executive of the Farmers’Union nt..Palmerston North yesterday, Mr.. W. J. Polson (the president), in speaking of the .Arbitration Court, said that the decisionof that tribunal which had granted shearers a rate of 265, 4d. per hundred would have a disastrous effect on pastoralists. Slaughtermen were . asking,. 45s,’per hundred (for ’killing sheep. He condemned the -state of affairs . which- had permitted the freezing companies and their employees to arrive at some agreement where;. by the , extra cost to the companies should, bo passed on - to the producer. They were the victims of a similar arrangement between the. shipowners and the yharf labourers, and it was neces- , *ary that the producers should make an emphatic protest against these arrangements, to' which rhe farmer was no party, and endeavour to have the whole dfius of .fixing rates, etc., thrown upon the Arbitration Court. He woulfl not i go so far as Mr. Burrell, wKo had said at Feilding that the Arbitration Court had outlived its usefulness and should be abolished, but he certainly thought the Court had gone mad, and that its decisions were not on- sane or sound economic lines. Something must be done to: bring them back to their senses. If the rate- for freezing hands was td ■ be arranged for, say, the next three years, without consulting the Court; the • companies would be courting disaster. Freezing company representatives had attended the. last Dominion conference of the Farmers’ Union, but the farmers’ representatives had received very little satisfaction from, them. Th'jy admitted that, they were quite prepared to-'com-promise with the employees to some extent, and that was what the farmers were up against. ( Air, M Lean, of Baetihi, drew attention -to the ( fac't that- the decisions of the Arbitration Court were virtually the law .of the .land, land if they did not abide, by that Court’s, rulings they would be .virtually striking. Because things were in a bad way at the moment, this was -not the time to assert that 'the Court had outlived its usefulness. They should abide, loyally by any order that the Court might make. Mr. O. P. Lynch, of Paraparaumu, expimssed: the opinion • Ilhat the only solution to the labour problem was to abolish preference to unionists. Buchanan, of Palmerston North,' thought that the old order of strikes and lock-outs was preferable to the legal impositions of/he Court, and said that ho had consistently advocated the abolition of that body.