Evening Post TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1809.

Evening Post, Volume LVII, Issue 25, 31 January 1899, Page 4

In another column appcara a lcttor from tlio Kocrotary^ fcho Wellington Trades Council purporting to reply to curtain critlciHinij |>unniiil b,y Hub journal upon the umuu to which tlho UniouiNl olllciuls put Iho ImliiHlriul (youclliutlun and Arbitration Act, and u|\ou tho pvopoNttl of the Incut Tuition Council that tint prune* whould bo dnburrud by uliltiflo front cnniniontiug upon cdNuH undci' eolmidorutiou of tho Conciliiilion Hoimta, '|\lu» luttui 1 , which has uviduntly huun onto I'll lly dUuuwJod, and is no doubt tho olllfial j>roduotlon of tho TradoM Council, vnimn two pointn that deHiirvo a rujily. Ah ,for tho Tuuloh Council lourtinu lull publicity, tuul being ''fully Hulmliod of thn juH\/iou of ovory dispute brought by tho lucril unions before the Conciliation Hoard,' 1 theso are Questions upon which opinions may, in the light of known facts, bo justly allowed to differ. They axo, howovtu 1 , subjects that do not lend thommolvoa to discussion, as th»y

are concerned with the motives and mental activities of members of the Trades Council, and nob with the external actions of that body. In dealing with this matter Mr. Vaney raises a point on which we can readily join issue. He. asks, on behalf of his Council, that this journal should point to " some specific case or cases where an unfair use has been made of the Board by the local unions." In a recent article we quoted a patent case of such " unfair use" by non*local unions — namely, the Kaitangata mining dispute. Further, the " untair use " consists in the way the Unionist officers work up disputes on trifling matters, and such transactions cannot in all cases be proved by reference to public records. The methods adopted are well understood by the Unionist officials, aid are no doubt clearly perceived by the u^ore keen-sighted of the ordinary members of unions. They are also forced upon tte notice of employers by the constant industrial litigation instituted by the Union officials upon slight pretexts. Even a "right-coloured" document like the .Annual Report of the Department of Labour is forced to admit, the pettiness cf the, issues raised, although, of course, it is carefully worded to plead all possible extenuating considerations. In one place we find the following sentence, which is, to say the least of it, significant to those who will read between the lines: — "It must be remembered, however, that small as some of the issues apear to outsiders, they may be mere germs of mischief that, if not eradicated, might grow to gigantic proportion"^ if "Undisturbed." The admitted fact here is the apparent smallness , of the issues, the extenuating considerations are mere conjecture vitiated by " ifs" and "ans." A similar half-conscious fear that the Industrial Courts are being too readily resorted to also underlies $ pass-1 age like this :— " The objection made that petty griexjances are magnified , and labour, disputes aggravated in order that Boards j may be kept sitting would probably be met if the fees artd travelling "expenses of members of the Board should (like the expenses of witnesses) be charged to the disputing parties as costs. The trade unions would certainly be unlikely to bring petty disputes forward if the heavy expenses of calling the Board together might fall upon them ; but, on the other hand, great care must be taken lest the usefulness of the Act be crippled by the fear of extreme expense supervening." The sole and sufficient reason for the fairness of their references to the Conciliation Board is found by the members of the Trades Council in the fact that, so they contend, in every case " substantial concessions have been granted to the workers." They challenge us to find local instances to the contrary. Not to go beyond the records of cases published in the last annual report of the Labour Department, we would refer them to the furniture trades dispute created in September, 1897, and even more particularly to the building trades dispute brought about in the following month. These cases illustrate in a marked degree a peculiar characteristic of the official unionist procedure ir* cases before the Conciliation Boards and Arbitration Court. The process reminds us of nothing so much as the bargaining of an Indian or Chinese huckster. Exorbitant demands are made in the hope that out of the upsetting of the true sense of proportion something more than the fair maorket price may be paid. Compare the demands made by the unions in the cases we have quoted with what they actually obtained, and it is hard to believe that " substantial concessions " were granted fco the workers. Even when those concessions are examined upon their isolated merits, undwarfed by the magnitude of the demands, they still seem petty and cannot without a misuse of words be termed "jmbstantial." • It will be seen that in each of the two disputes quoted the union disagreed with the recommendations of th(3 Conciliation Board, and carried the case up to the Arbitration Court. A slight concession was, it is true, granted in one instance, but in the other the Court gave nothing more than the Board had suggested, and the " substantial concessions" as the> result of the whole prolonged dispute were practically no more than an increase of per hour in wages. Does this look as if the dispute were one that would have arisen had there been no Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act on the colony's Statute-book? An impartial perusal of the records of cases leads to the conclusion that some of the disputes, even if not the majority, are such as would never have arisen but for the Act and the judicial machinery it has set up. The institution of disputes under the Act costs the unions nothing, even if they gain no "substantial conpessions," and the Courts offer tempting facilities for obtaining better terms from employers by the Indian huckster method. It is in no spirit of hostility to trade unionism that we point out the errors that are being committed, but rather in the hope that a good cause may not be wrecked through the — to use the kindest word — mistaken tactics of the official leaders. Collective bargaining and union organisation have done a great deal in preserving workers from the evil effects of friodern industrial pressure, but there is a growing risk of running on to dangerous rocks so long as the officials — who, after all, are not always t".he same thing as the unions — persist in unduly straining industrial relations. The second point in Mr. y^mey's letter that merits an answer is his contention that in a recent article on " Trade Union Errors " v'for this, we presume, is the article referred to as "The Mistakes of Trades Unions ") we commented on the merits of issues between employers and employed. Mr. Vaney says that the article in question " consisted mainly of an attack on the principle of the minimum wage, with special reference to the principle as appited to the moulding trade dispute then before the Board of Conciliation." From t.ue mistake he has made in the title of the article it is evident that air. Vaney had not it before him at tho time he was writing, and if he had so had it it is more than doubtful whether he would have made the assertion he did. It is true that the article was mainly directed against the doctrine of a minimum wage as illustrated in ths dispute before the Board, and we will oven go so far as to grant Mr. Vaney that the subject was suggested to us by th\e case in question, but the issue before the Conciliation Board was not the (general principle of a minimum wage but the concrete question whether competent moulders were to receive Is 4d or less per hou.v for tl^eir wages. Tho particular arguments for or against^ tho Is 4d wo naturally did jiot discuss, buF the general principle»of the Minimum wage was as open to criticism ac is the legal distinction between murder and manslaughtor during a ti'ial for homicidg. We challenged the Trades Council to produce an instance of a reputable journal in this city "commenting upon poinU at issue in oasos sub judice before the Conciliation Board." The article quoted is not an instance in point, for the principle oi a minimum Wage — an abstract economic theory or else a legal enactment — cannot be an issue sub judico between a particular set of omployers and employed. A particular rato of wages can be, and upon $,uch a point we should not comment while a case was beforp the Conciliation Board, although we fail to see how a Conciliation Board can be construed, as the Trades Council would have it, into a Court of law. The danger that would result from prohibiting newspaper comments, as sug§csted, is that the Unions would word ieir issues so vaguely as to prevent dis*' cussion upon any and every economic question directly or indirectly connected with the points raised by the dispute. In fact, they would bo able to gag the press in this x'espect as successfully as the Premier gagged Parliament in the matter of the Police Commission last session. We can hardly believe Parliament would support

the prohibition, but we are sorry to see the Wellington Trades Council thus injuring the best interests of Unionism. But all this notwithstanding, we wish it clearly understood that we are entirely in support of the essential principles of the Act, which we would preserve, but to do this it has now become obvious that the statute must be amended.