JUDGE'S COMMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 7

JUDGE'S COMMENT

DETAILS IN AWARDS

MATTERS FOR CONCILIATION

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, September 16.

The submission to the Arbitration Court of technical questions in award proceedings which could have been more properly decided in Conciliation Council was commented upon by the president of the Court, Mr.1 Justice Page, when the hearing of an application for a new award by the Auckland Electrical Workers' Union was continued today. Mr. W. E. Anderson appeared for the employers and Mr. K. B. Simpson for the union.

"We thought it right that the Court should make some reference to the form in which the recommendations of the Conciliation Council had reached it," stated the president when announcing that the Court's decision would be reserved. "The Court expected that matters such as wages, hours of work, overtime payments and holidays were matters which they would be normally called upon to decide, but where there are intricate technical questions involved they are primarily .matters for Conciliation Council.

"For instance, the Court spent the best part of the day on the interpretation clause trying to find out what branches of industry were meant to be covered by the award,", continued the president. "Similarly,'in regard to the manufacture of electrical equipment the Court has been asked to build up a set of special conditions, none of which had been even discussed in council. These technical questions are obviously matters which should be dealt with in council where the members are all experts and infinitely better equipped to decide the question or, at any rate, to state in clear language the issue en which they are unable to agree.

"There seems to have been no real attempt made in Conciliation Council to reach common ground on these technical questions. The Court is entitled to more help on such technical matters and cannot function unless it receives such help. We find it extremely difficult to make an adequate and . completely satisfactory award unless we receive that assistance."