IN SECTIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 72, 25 March 1912, Page 8

IN SECTIONS.

MERCHANTS' ASSISTANTS. ADVICE OF THE ARBITRATION COUIST. The question of whether the merchants' -Assistants' dispute is to be heard as one dispute- was decided by the Arbitration Court in a judgment filed with the Clerk of Awards to-day. " The union," said Mr. Justice Sim, "includes within its ranks a number of persons employed in the warehouses of about 200 merchants in the city of Wellington. ■ The union has' originated a dispute with these employers in connection with the hours of work, wages, and other conditions. When the dispute came before the Conciliation Council' the employers contended that, as different trades and industries were affected by the dispute, it was impossible to arrange ono set of hours and scale of wages that could be made applicable to all of the various callings, and that, therefore, the dispute should be divided up into sections, and each section, treated as a separate disput*. The question submitted by the Conciliation ' Council for the opinion of this Court is this : Should the dispute 'be heard and considered by a Council of Conciliation as one dispute or otherwise? It was contended Dy Mr. Weston that' the union was not justified in joining different classes of employers as parties to one dispute, and that/ therule- laid down by the Court in 'connection with the general labourers' dispute in Christchurch (Book of Awards vol. X., 317, at p. 339) should be applied in -the present case. A difficulty,, however, in applying that rule in the present; case arises from the fact that the employer* cannot be separated into clearly-defined classes, and that under any attempted classification a number of employers must be' included in several classes- The -union certainly would haye been wi.=er if it had commenced its operations in a more modest wuy, and had endeavoured to obtain an award in connection with the workers employed by one or move classes of employers whose operations^ were similar in character. Tl\e union) however, did not do that, and tho question now is how the dispute which the union originated should be dealt with. In the circumstances there i« nothing to be gained by holding that the union, must originate separate disputes, and the only alternative is for the present council to deal with the dispute in sections. That is what we advise the council to do. The council has made a provisional classification of the employer* concerned into sixteen groups. We do not express any opinion as to the propriety or otherwise of this classification, but we recommend the council to make the groups as few as it reasonably can." Mr. T. S. Weston appeared for the employers and Mr. A. H. Cooper for the union.