PREFERENCE TO UNIONISTS,

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 99, 28 April 1909, Page 10

PREFERENCE TO UNIONISTS,

OBJECTION ON PRINCIPLE,' fBT TELEGHA.PH — PRESS ASSOCIATION.! AUCKLAND, 27th April. During an address by Mr. Grosvenor* on behalf of employers at the Arbitra^ tion Court to-day, he remarked that the employer.", objected to preference to unionists on principle. " What is that principle ?" inquired his Honour. " That argument is used every time and I have never been 'able to discover what the principle is." Mr. Grosvenor said that the principle! was that unionism was made the sign, manual of efficiency. His Honour said it seemed to him that some of the men would take all the benefits which the union obtained and would not contribute to the funds of "tha union. A little further on in his address Mr. Grosvenor made reference to a statement that had been made that the number o£> financial members of the particular union with which they were dealing .was about 60. . ' His Honour : " The membership of the union is gradually becoming less, and at the present rate the union "will soon be killed. That may be a consume mation devoutly to bo wished for. It is wot for this Court to say, but whether the Court should assist in it is quite another matter. The workers outside the union havo no standing at all unde.r the_ Act, and the only way the workers can come before the Arbitration Court is through the union." The Court had f ranted preference, he continued, since Ir. Justice Williams'^ time, and -for the emnloyers to come at this late hour and talk about it ".seems to me posi* tively silly," he concluded. AGAINST COMPULSION. • CHRISTCHURCH, 27th Aprif. ( At a meeting of the Executive of thft Canterbury Employers' Association tonight the following resolution waa passed : " That the executive of theassociation support the Advisory Board in its protest against any' compulsion being brought to bear upon employers which will deprive them of their right to select such labour as they deem best suited to their requirements, or which would interfere ,with the inherent right of every man to earn his living by his labour unless he first subscribes to the rules of a trade union, to which he may have personal objection, and that this association strongly urges upon every employer to oppose the inclusion of any preference clausa in all awards and industrial agreements."

The truth of the hackneyed adagd "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good" is (says the Otago Daily Times): being well exemplified in Dunedin at' present in connection with, the outbreak' of scarlet fever and diphtheria. The fright which people have experienced! is creating an exceptionally heavy demand for all manner of disinfectants in the shape of soaps and fluids, and one< firm with a large wholesale trade has ■been forced to cable instructions for it* supply order to be increased three-fold.-