LABOR AND THE COURT.

Evening Star, Issue 19326, 12 August 1926, Page 7

LABOR AND THE COURT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In criticising my letter on the basic wage you very wisely ignored my chief objections to the Arbitration Court’s, ruling, which objections may be summarised as follows: 1. Because the court claimed that it fixed the basic wage of to-day by adding to the basic wage of 1914 the total percentage of increase in the cost of living over that of 1914, but it did not do so. 2. Because it said that the cost of living had increased only 60 per oent., when the Government Statistician’s figures show that the increase has averaged about -62 per cent, for the past year. 3. Because the rate of Is lOd per hour does not represent even a 60 per cent, increase, for 60 per cent, of Is 2d (the basic rate in 1914) added to Is 2d gives Is 10|d to the nearest farthing. 4. Because it accepted as a guide agreements at Is lOd, which wore forced upon several unions by its own September pronouncement, and ignored the _ free agreements which fixed the minimum at Is lid. 6. Because it considered possible overtime in the computation of a general basic wage, and refused to allow for certain lost time.

6. Because it decreed, in accordance with expediency, that, as several unipus, owing to the lengthy terms of their awards, were still receiving but Is 9d, it would bo unfair to grant the current increase in the cost of living to the unions whoso awards were now expiring.

Any one of these reasons exposes the court to criticism; taken together they suggest a vote of uo-confidence in the court..

Your own comments are scarcely apropos, for you appear to think it altogether Utopian to ask that workers bo given an opportunity of earning a living all the year round. No doubt you would subscribe to the principle as a glorious ideal—to keep in view—but you would oppose the immediate application of it with tooth and claw. You will admit, I am sure, that, as every man has the right to live, he also has the right to work. But if the industrial of the country cannot (or will not) give effect to that right, it blazons the fact that it cannot (or will not) fulfil the primary function of production and industry. As the Bishop of Liverpool said recently. “ The capitalists must open their minds to the fact that wages must come before dividends.” This is a primary truth that is always ridiculed as a se jond-rate fallacy by those who would carry on industry on the ethical principles of Captain Kidd or Get-ricb-quick Wallingford. If the Arbitration Court, which is said to be a wages tribunal, will not deal in the only way open to it with a question which determines the volume and value of wages, it becomes merely a shadow or a sham. You say that the function of the court is to fix a fair day’s remuneration for a fair day’s work; hut tho court does not carry out its function. It deals mostly, not in days, but in hours. As I have shown, it fixes fifty minutes’ pay for sixty minutes’ work, and that constitutes one of our chief complaints against it. You defend,the court’s contention that, as the basic wage could not well be increased without at the same time increasing the rate for skilled workers, no increase at all should bo granted. We contend, and are also able to prove, that the skilled men, in order that their wages should have their 1914 purchasing power, should be receiving 2s 4Jd per hour, rather than the 2s 3d fixed by the court. Tho court says it is impossible to grant this, and when we ask why we are treated to a dubious rigmarole about production. Mr Monteith says that in the case in question the employers produced no evidence in opposition to the claims of the workers, which were buttressed by evidence of the most convincing kind. You twit ns with evading the issue of production. T reply by saying that under the present system production is not an issue for us at all, nor is it an issue for the court. The work of production is carried on for private profit under the control and administration of private employers, who own tho tools and the factories, hire the men, find the markets, administer their business in their own way without consulting their employees. As they claim all the profits there are, they must not Ire permitted to make good their losses by lowering the standard of living of their workers; for wo must always remember that the workers have no assets, no opportunities to wealth. The only ideal they possess is three meals and a bed for 365 days per annum, and those who advocate the realisation of this dream are howled at as cranks and Bolshevists. It is on record that tho Arbitration Court refuses to consider profits in the fixing of wages; it refused even to consider the sugar profits which were said to rend like a fairy tale. Hence, wo deny its right to consider losses, or, rather, rumors of losses, particularly when actual losses are not of our making.— I am etc., J. Robinson. August 11.