DIVIDED COUNSELS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 123, 20 November 1935, Page 10

DIVIDED COUNSELS

On the political side Labour is indicting the Government for having "smashed the Arbitration Court," but on the industrial side it is not certain whether the unions wish to have compulsory arbitration restored. Mr. Mazengarb, replying in Wellington East to the charge of Court-smashing, stated that the Alliance of Labour had recently passed a resolution against restoring the power of compulsory arbitration. To this the president of the Wellington Trades and Labour Council replies that a large proportion of the unions affiliated to the Alliance are favourable to compulsory arbitration, and that "when the question has been dealt with in any reasonably representative conference of the industrial labour movement of the Dominion a large majority has always favoured compulsory arbitration." This answer is in itself an admission that industrial labour is divided on the question, and while there is this division, not merely in expressed opinion but in practice, the Labour Party cannot sustain its charge against the Government. We ourselves admitted that a change was desirable in the conciliation and arbitration procedure in order to emphasise the conciliation side. Arbitration and the settlement of disputes on standardised lines tended to force varying industries into an unvarying mould. But we thought, and said at the time, that the door to arbitration should have been left more open than the amendment of the Act left it. If, however, this change is to be brought about there must be some assurance that the unions are prepared to accept compulsory arbitration. The president of the Trades Council insinuates that there has been a "take it or leave it" attitude in conciliation by some employers; but he cannot deny that, before the Act was amended, some unions adopted this "lake it or leave it" plan. They would take arbitration for all they could get from it. and then brandish the big slick of militancy to get more. Unless there is full acceptance of arbitration, not merely acceptance while it suits one party, the case against abolition of the compulsory principle is not strong.