ARBITRATION COURT

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 9, 11 January 1923, Page 8

ARBITRATION COURT

NOMINATION QF MEMBERS

DAY FIXED BY GOVERNOR

GENERAL.

The authorities have appointed 27th January as the day for the nomination of member* and acting-members of the Court of Arbitration. Mr. W. Scott at present represents the employers on the Court, and Mr. M. J. Reardon the workers. Under the Act as amended last session, no person may De S candidate for appointment unless he has been nominated at a special meeting of an industrial union, and has signified his consent to nomination. If more than one candidate is nominated for any office the Registrar of industrial unions will forward to all unions of workers or employers, as the case- may be, a liet of the persona so nominated, and will ask each union to recommend from the list a suitable person for appointment. The most important principle involved under the amended Act relates to the matter of vo'.J.ig by the unions for the positions of assessors. Formerly, each industrial union of workers, or employers, recommended some person for appointment to the respective positions, and the Governor-General made the appointments after there had been apportioned to each person the value of the votes allowed to each union. Each union was allowed one vote, and thereafVr one vote for every fifty members. This procedure gave a heavy preponderance of voting power to large unions or organisations, such as the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, which, curiously enough,'though it does not work under awards of the Arbitration Court, yet has a voice in the nomination of the workers' representatives. Now, however, there is a difference in the voting system, as no individual union is allowed to exercise more than five votes. The recommendations will be confined to those persons who have been nominated, and the appointment of members of the Court will be made from those securing the highest number of votes.