UNEXPIRED AWARDS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 68, 22 March 1933, Page 9

UNEXPIRED AWARDS

THE POWER TO AMEND

COURTS DECISION

Before the Conciliation Council in Wellington recently, an application was made for an amendment of the. Wellington Grocers' Assistants' award by the omission of branch managers of chain grocery stores from the award. The application was opposed by Mr. A. W. Croskery, representing the Grocers' Assistants' Union, on the ground that it was not legal to amend an award or apply for. a new award during the currency of an existing award; It was agreed that a case should bo stated for decision by the Arbitration Court.

Mr. Justice Frazer, in a decis.ion refusing the application for a new award, states: —"The question submitted for the opinion of the Court is whether an application for a new award, to cover only a limited section of the workers who are for the time being bound by an award, the term of which has not expired, can be made under •section 9. Ifl the opinion of the Court, the section is designed to enable an award, as a whole, to be reviewed during the terra of its currency, and, notwithstanding the fact that its term has not expired, to be superseded by a new award. The present application does not purport to be an application for a new award in lieu of the existing award, but it is an application for a new award to amend, without entirely superseding, the existing award. Its object is to sectionalism the existing award, so that instead of there being one award making provisions for all grocers' assistants, there shall be two awards, one dealing with branch managers only, and the other (the existing award as impliedly amended) dqaling with other grocers' assistants. It must not be overlooked that the powers of the Court to amend an existing award are very limited; and the present application indirectly involves an amendment that the Court is not empowered to make. An award that contradicts another award cannot be made while the term of that award is unexpired, for ob\ riously there cannot be two different and contradictory sets of conditions binding on the same persons at the same time; but that is the situation that would arise if the Court were to entertain the present application."