INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 264, 3 August 1929, Page 6

INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE

JUDGMENT OF ARBITRATION COURT In a judgment delivered in the Arbitration Court in connection with the Northern, Taranaki, Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago and Southland engineers’, moulders’, boilermakers, iron ship and bridge builders’ dispute, Mr. Justice Frazer states that “the Court has not altered the terms of the expired awards, except insofar qs the parties agreed in Conciliation Council. In view of the claims put forward on behalf of the manufacturing section of the industry, a majority of the Court has decided to give that section an opportunity. o£ reopening the mutter after the expiration of six months, when further information may be available. Mr. Schmitt,” continues the judgment, “desires to add his opinion (in support) and Mr. Monteith desires to record his dissenting opinion. Wages for turret lathe turners and a partial exemption for Metters Ltd. are reserved for. further consideration.” Opinion of Mr. L. J. Schmitt. “Evidence at the hearing,” said Ms. Schmitt, the employers’ representative on the Court, “proved that there arc at least two distinct divisions in the engineering industry. Broadly speaking theue are: (1) The jobbing and repairing section; and (2) the purely manufacturing and assembling section. The latter is governed by economic factors that have very little or no bearing on the former. . . . Automatic machinery compulsorily installed on account of external competitive forces has through its very nature altered in a large degree the hitherto necessary employment of fully-skilled workers. Nowadays semiskilled and even quite unskilled operatives can control many of the machines in the manufacturing division of the engineering industry. Further, recent progressive developments in production and power methods have caused extensive changes in engineering practice. For the above and for many other reasons I am of the opinion that it is right that the parties concerned have an early opportunity of conferring and if possible agreeing upon a set of wages and conditions that will be helpful to both workers and employers in bringing about a state of prosperity in the manufacturing division of this important industry which, to say the least, is at the present time stagnant Moreover, a correct distinction between the first and second divisions will also result in increased prosperity in the jobbing section of the industry.” Dissenting Opinion of Mr. Monteith. “I dissent because of the statement in the memorandum,” said Mr. A.' L. Monteith, the workers’ representative on the Court “This award has been made at the request of the employers. In the past three separate awards operated and the Court was asked by the employers to make a comprehensive award, and the present award, which covers moulders, boilermakers and engineers, etc., was the outcome of such application. I cannot see why a decision to make a comprehensive award, a decision with which I agreed, should within a few weeks be altered and a suggestion for another small award be made for workers already covered by this comprehensive award; one minute a grouping is made, and the next a suggestion for a breakingdown of this grouping is made, even before the decision for grouping is put into operation. In my opinion such fluctuation leaves unions in a very uneas» state and is not desirable.”