The Evening Star FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1928. A CONFERENCE?

Evening Star, Issue 19781, 3 February 1928, Page 4

The Evening Star FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1928. A CONFERENCE?

The British Empire has “gone nap on conferences. The first Imperial Conference set the fashion, and has now become a periodical institution. We do not deny that it has done good work, though it would not be an easy matter to state concisely and definitely what benefits it has conferred on the parties represented. To tell the truth —the question of Imperial defence apart—in the reconcilement of the often conflicting interests of different parts of the Empire very little more has been achieved than the exposition of the different points of view and the resumption of the status quo ante. At present the favorite subject for the consideration of conferences is the improvement of industrial relations. When the lust mail left England there was much talk of a proposed great conference of Capital and Labor, at which the lines of a new attempt at cooperation in industry were to be laid down and the hatchet publicly buried betw'een the protagonists on both sides. In Australia this week Air Bruce nn-s proposed that a conference of employers and employees should be field to discuss the possibility’ of securing industrial peace. It has been favorably received by the employers in New South Wales and Victoria, and representatives of the trades unions, wx.-> one important exception, approve oi the proposal in general terms, but insist that the unions must be iree to select their representatives at such a discussion. The exception is :he Australian Workers’ Union, which decided to have nothing to do with Mr Bruce's proposal, delegates to the annual conference stating that it was obviously a piece of political propaganda. We would not go so far as to define the conference which the Parliamentary Committee is summoning to investigate the industrial Jaws of New Zealand as political propaganda. Nor would we roundly state that the organisations of employers and workers nro using the political machine to cover a discreet retreat after an advance made in a fit of temporary rashness, which brought the contending parlies to closer quarters than either of them relished. Whether they would have fought or made durable peace terms had they come into actual contact it is impossible to say. But both sides shrink from it. What wo mean by the term “ coming into actual contact ” is meeting face to face without the intervention of the Arbitration Court. As has been reiterated again and again in these columns, after the freshness of New Zealand’s innovation in legislation to settle industrial disputes had worn off, the employers clung to the arbitration system when commodity prices were rising, and the workers clung to it when they were falling. Then, within the past couple of years the employers agitated for the abolition of the court, and when the present Government proposed a start of the process in the Bill of fast session the employers’ organisations began to “ funk it.” Our Parliament also “funked it” last session, being worn out by the time it was asked to step into the ring. The result is that delegates from all points of the compass are now being invited into the ring—fresh. They may be fresh, hut few of them are courageous. Our Christchurch contemporary, the ‘ Press,’ lias put the position in a nutshell, it said in an article yesterday: “ The object of the investigation is to bring employer and employee into something like real harmony, and it would be easier to believe in a result of that kind if we knew that the committee would allowitself real freedom of inquiry and of action. But it is almost impossible to believe that it will do this. Its investigations will be carried out in a field dominated by the Arbitration Court, which it will persist in regarding as an original piece of the landscape; Grand this comes to the same thing—it will carry its inquiries as far as the court and no further. Yet the case against the court has been established so clearly that there will soon be no one, unless he is a member of a union or a member of Parliament, bold enough to bo unconvinced.” The vacillating employers’ organisations are certainly not bold enough when it comes to the point—not excluding the fire-eating Air Poison, And most certainly the trades union officials are not bold enough. Last night the Otago Labor Council met and passed a resolution whose preamble was cruvenly pacific, and whose essence was more full of misrepresentation than any piece of composition of equal.length, than any statement —from whatever country of origin—that it has been our fate to encounter, for a long time. We reproduce it, venturing the suggestion that its sting begins about halfway down:

Tho object of the Industrial, Conciliation, and Arbitration Act is to bring into operation machinery lor the peaceful settlement of industrial disputes. In this it may be said to have been successful. The Act, therefore, having brought about tho smooth running of industry, has made a valuable contribution to the welfare of tho dominion. By fixing a standard price for labor it has assisted the employers to regulate the prices of their commodities, and it did much to remove the sweating evil from our midst. It has not given complete satisfaction to workers, as awards of the court under the Act have not kept pace with the increased production of labor by the improvements in machinery now generally adopted. We are of opinion that the court should depart from the 1914 standard and adopt the standard of 1928. If this were done it would mean increased wages and fewer hours of work for those employed in industry, and it would materially assist in banishing unemployment.

As an antidote we reproduce au extract from ‘Dun’s International Review,’ published in New York at the end of 1927;

So much has been said to tho effect that high wages are the secret of this country’s prosperity that m, the interest of clear understanding it is well that some qualifications be made. High wages which accompany high productivity, either as a cause or a result, undoubtedly make for prosperity and the general welfare, but high wages which contribute to high industrial costs and are passed

beneficial results. If they yield benefits to the recipients it is at the expense of the rest of the community, and if no more substantial basis than this existed for the country’s prosperity the outlook would bo poor. The real basis of prosperity is that, as a rule, prices to consumers have advanced less than wages, thus enabling the wage*6amers to consume a larger physical quantity of goods. This could not bo so unless productivity was increasing. If wages and prices both advance 50 per cent, with production remaining the same, it is evident that the wage-earning class will have no. greater command over commodities than before and that its consumption cannot increase. This is a fundamental truth which is ignored in much of current discussion. Wage increases without increased production signify nothing but the competition of industrial groups with each other. If one wins larger buying powers, it does so at the expense of the others.