HAS THE ARBITRATION ACT FAILED?

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 101, 27 January 1928, Page 9

HAS THE ARBITRATION ACT FAILED?

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Professor Tocker. of Canterbury College, speaking at the Science Congress in Tasmania, has again thought tit to attack the arbitration and conciliation vindustrial system of settling disputes, operating in New Zealand during the last 34 years. The professor seems feverishly delirious with the idea that the Arbitration Court has been deadly guilty ot indiscriminately raising wages above the warranted .needs of the wage earner, and the capacity of the employers to pay; and, obsessed with that thought, he has pictured trade unionism as a giant bludgeoning the Court into submission to higher wages. It is apparent to those who have had dealings with the administration of the I.C. and A. Act, and practical knowledge of the workings of the Conciliation Council and the Court, that the professor knows little, if anything, about the matter he so stoutly essays to destroy, without offering a better substitute, which latter should be his object. It may be news to the protessor that 96 per cent, of the industrial disputes recorded in 1926-7 were settled in Conciliation Council, and simply ratified by the Court into an award. In Tasmania, speaking to scientists, he said that the standard of wages fixed by the Court tended to becom efhe standard for agricultural workers, which the farmer could not bear in New Zealand. This clearly shows that the protessor had no facts upon which to base his statements To suppjy a plea of tendencies instead of facts for tho abolition of an important system regulating the home happiness of a nation, borders on absurdity. Taking his own -statement that “only a fourth of the workers of N«w Zealand are enrolled trade unionists, and that portion not atfeeting oversea competition.” If that is so the question is how can the standard of one-fourth, a great number of which arc not registered under the I.C. and A. Act, affect the wages of the other three-fourths’ not hound in any way by the Act? To accept such a statement would test - the elasticity of the most supple imagination. Tn his attack on the “Cost ot Living Basis.” he ca lls it a stereotyped and a "straightjacket system. It would be interesting to know what the professor would put in place of a cost-of-living basis. Is he fully acquainted with the facts that gave cause for that piece of legislation —the War Legislation and Statute Law Amendment Ast. providing for the re gnlatio nof wages, with the movemen'-" in vibe cost of living? 'Does, he Icrow that the lagging of wages behind the advancing higher and higher price level between 1914 and 1917-18 nearly caused an upheaval in tills country? Whut is there wiong with a cost-of-living basis, legally fixed, for computing a living wage for the manhood and womanhood of any country?- So far. the protessor rths offered nothing to replace it; only the plea for individual freedom to deai with the individual worker by the employer, by the process of trade union extermination. Surely the professor is not suggesting t.iav the workers of New Zealand are not worthy of a wage on a par with the cost of living, and existing price levels i In -reference to his statement that the arbitration system of New Zealand had failed to prevent strikes, 1 would strongly advise r>t mto read the I,about Department Reprrt covering 1926-27, containing comparisons of strikes in various countries of the world, where he will (proudly, as a New Zealander) find that the number pf strikes in New Zealand computed upon the basis of per 10,000 of tlie population is by far the lowest in the whole world. The New Zealand Year Book for 1928 states that the year 1927 was “singularly free from disputes of any serious magnitude.” Professor Tocker states that the “Court has fostered unionism rather than mutual agreement.” Has not the Court in this fulfilled its mission? Surely the settlement of 96 per cent, of industrial disputes by mutual agreement outside the Court by conciliation and the establishment of a world record of .industrial peace is a tribute to the unionism created and irrefutable evidence in favour of the system the professor seeks to abolish? .

To blame the present price disparity to a system of compulsory arbitration is absurd. The disparity is world-wide and not only local in significance, and the professor may argue with quite as much logic that the price disparity in the United Kingdom and the United States is caused by the lack of a compulsory arbitration system such as we have "in New Zealand. Perhaps if the professor investigated the questions of post-war over-capitalisation, the system of company taxation, the increase in distributing charges due in inflated rents, and the increase in charges on loans he might find a better field for solving the economic problem. To remove compulsory arbitration will create the industrial chaos that has existed in Britain for the last 50 years. With no power to compel the disputant parties and no tribunal to receive evidence and give final judgment thereon, strikes can go on indefinitely until the Government enforce arbitration. In countries where no compulsory arbitration system exists the most that a strike can accomplish is to compel a meeting of the parties with, no power to enforce a settlement. I wonder if those who clamour for the abolition of the I.C. and A. Act in New Zealand would care to find this country in the same industrial pickle? It is clear to the thinking mind that the only flexibility that will satisfy the prophets of individual bargaining and the criers against the basic wage and the cost of living basis is the right to buy labour nt their own price and shunt the nation into a drift of intolerable pauperism. Be it known to the captains of industry and the kings of finance that under the wage system wages are the measure of human home comfort, liberty of life, and mental, moral and spiritual development, and their duty to the State must be impelled by service to man.—l am, etc., J. TUCKER. Secretary, Storemen and Packers’ Union. WelljWiloib. January 26. ..,q . "A'.-t-i,, ..„ ustuiAaiCvA.