“STATE OF CHAOS”

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 224, 18 June 1929, Page 13

“STATE OF CHAOS”

INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION POSITION IN AUSTRALIA Industrial laws in Australia seem to have got into a state of hopeles? chaos, according to Mr, M. J. Reardon, who returned to Wellington by the Maunganui yesterday after a seven months’ stay jn the Commonwealth, “i’irst,” said Mr, Reardon, “you have the' Commonwealth Arbitration Court; then in the State of New South Wales there is an Arbitration Court and Wages Board as well. In Victoria and in Tasmania there are Wag<s Boards; and there aye' State Arbitration Courts in Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. In addition to these tribunals,' there are the Federal Legislature and the six State Legislatures, all taking a hand in industrial legislation. The New South Wales Labour Government recently passed a fd-hours A c t for all workers ’ but the Federal Cpurt of Appeal decided that the law should apply only to the workers who were under the State awards. The result was the extraordinary situation of bodies of inen iipd?r tfie Commonwealth awards, which provide for a 48-hoprs’ week, while Others alongsW? them were working under State award? and governed by th? 44-honrs’- legislation of the New South Wales'Parliament. The effect of that sort M thing is that'throughout the States there is hopeless confusion“\p effort is now being made by th? Federal Government to remedy this stat? of affairs by abolishing the Federal Arbitration Court This brings up the question of Federal rights v, State rights; apd, while the question is purely one of whether the Federal Court should continue to function or not, tfiere is the much more important issue of whether the Commonwealth Parliament should he paramount, An a consequence pf the 44-fiour legislation in New South Wales, when the 'Federal Coqrt decreed that the law should W apply to workers Under th? Federal awards, the New South Wales Parliament gave th? employees under Federal awards tfio 44hopr week, Recently the Railway Commissioners, who were ostensibly set UP to control the railways independently of political interference, proposed to revert to the Federal award, but were restrained from doing so by the pledge made by the Bavin Government during tfie election, jn which they stated that they would not revert to 48 hpurs, “Unfortunately Labour has abandoned its 8-hqur principles, after having erected monuments to the movement in, memory of the 8-hours’ day, and has adopted a longer working day in order to have a full free Saturday, The effect of this has been that office staffs have had to be granted the whole Saturday off as well, with the result that a very large proportion of the railway service, for mgtancei is now only working 35 hours a week, These anomalies, of course, are responsible for good deal of labour unrest in Australia. . . “The coal situation there is purely a matter of markets. If is the sapie difficulty that they have had in England; pnd the ’ sgm? 4? Diey ar? experiencing in America, “The timber workers affair is of minor importance except that the whole Labour movement can see that this is the first attack on the 44-hour week- For tlffit reason th? affair has been given very Wide importance ip the eyes of the industrial workers in Australia-