WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1898.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 5, 6 July 1898, Page 4

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1898.

THE GOVERNMENT AND ITS EMPLOYES. The Wages Protection Bill gave rise last night to an important discussion on the inclusion of the Government among the employers liable to the provisions of the measure. The Premier, as usual, strongly opposed the principle of making his Labour laws apply with equal fairness to the State and to private employers. Local authorities are to be subjected to the Bill, but not the central Government, presumably on the theory that the Government can do no wrong —at least, so long as the present Ministry occupies the Treasury Benches. The workers of the colony, especially those in Government employ, may have quite a different opinion on the matter, and it is an undoubted faot that many of them resent bitterly the persistent exclusion of Government Departments from the operations of statutes intended to protect the wage-earuers. It cannot be too forcibly stated that iv this colony the State is entering more closely every day into the arena of industrial competition. In addition to its older administrative functions, it now performs many duties formerly left to private enterprise. It is not our purpose to enter upon any discussion of this significant ohauge in the powers exercised by the Government, but dimply to point to it as a fact evident to all who look around them. This increasing activity has made the Government one of the largest of employers, and it is, therefore, especially necessary that every precaution should be taken to prevent the Cabinet of the day using its double function of political control and industrial management to crush private opponents and curry favour personally among State employes. The danger is a very real one, and with the administration — the expanded administration of to-day — in the hands of unscrupulous politicians the risk of national disaster looms very near. Parliament, the bulwark of the people against executive wrong-doing, should consider carefully the best means of regulating this increased activit}' of the State, and of placing Ministers in the capacity of employers under such rigid statute laws as will prevent their abusing their powers to the moral and material detriment of the working classes. Without attaching any extraordinary depravity to the present Government, it must be quite apparent that it has not been able to resist the temptations of its added functions, and a great deal of the Tarnmauyism beginning to spring up in our midst is due to the lack of restrictions upon the "employer-rights" of Ministers. The poverty of the arguments he can advance for liis contention, and the obstinacy with which the Premier adheres to the exemption of Stale Departments, shows how pernicious lias been the influence of this unlicensed extension of power upon himself. He is clinging to his supposed privileges as an employer of State labour with all the self-will and narrow-mindedness he was wont to attribute to bond fide employers who opposed some of the modern Labour Bills. For throughout this question it must be remembered that the Government has during its term of office the powers and privileges of an employer ; but it is not really the employer—it does not supply the funds for the enterprises — and it is constitutionally bound to carry out the instructions of the people given through their representatives in Parliament assembled. The exemption of the State from the category of employers in our Labour laws thus only serves to increase the powers of the Ministry of the day as against the real employer, the colony. It is almost inconceivable that a sincere and liberal-minded statesman should adopt a course such as that pursued by the Premier last night. Is it that he really "wished to wreck Labour legislation of the future rather than abate one iota of the arbitrary powers of control exercised by the political heads of Departments ? Look at the arguments advanced T)y the Right Honourable gentleman in support of his precarious position : " The Government did not deduct the wages of its emplo3 > c's for accident insurance, so there was no necessity for bringing them under the Bill." If the Government did not commit the offence against which the Bill .provided, what reason could there possibly be for excluding it expressly from the operation of the measure ? It would make no difference to the Government at present whether it were included or not, but it would effectually prevent it so transgressing in the future. The Premier also insisted that the Bill must pass in its original form, in order that the Council should bo constitutionally compelled to accept it. This, as anyone who understands the Premier's devious ways iv legislation must know, is mere verbiage, and there is -every reason to believe the Legislative Council would see that the Bill was a j uster measure if it applied to the State equally with private persons and local authorities. As .was pointed out last night, the present Government is very inconsistent iv its definition of "employer" iv its various Labour laws, and it might well go back to the wording of the Employers' Liability Act of 1882, which explicitly included in the term employer " the Governor or any Minister acting for or on behalf of Her Majesty or Her Majesty's Government ' within the colouy." At any rate, as has previously been pointed out, it is a gross injustice to private employers and to State employes to exempt tlie Government from modern Labour laws. Older precedents - are agaiust this illiberal "Liberal" innovation, and last night's division list lends a hope that ,the House has seen through the pernicious tendency of these Ministerial exceptions. *