GENEVA LABOUR CONFERENCE

Evening Star, Issue 22804, 12 November 1937, Page 7

GENEVA LABOUR CONFERENCE

UNWIELDINESS THE FIRST IMPRESSION EMPLOYER DELEGATES CRITICISED NO HELP IN FRAMING CONVENTIONS [From Due Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, November 11. That there should be a change in the system of representation at the International Labour Conference, Geneva, is one of the conclusions reached by Mr Armstrong, Minister of Labour, who was the Government representative at this year’s gathering. In an extensive report of the proceedings, occupying 65 pages, Mr Armstrong deals with the business transacted, and gives impressions of his first visit to this great world gathering of 430 delegates and advisers. “ After a newcomer to the conference has overcome an initial impatience with the unwieldiness of the international gathering, and his first fears of the hopelessness of persuading some countries, who are not always the smallest ones, to acceptance of any reforms, he becomes reconciled,” states Mr Armstrong, “to the longer view that the gradual process of creating written standards of social and industrial ethics, step by step, as each year shows areas of new ground made firm by reasonable accord of international thought, is probably the most useful purpose served by the organisation. When each reform is adopted by the conference it usually has before it the experience of some country or countries more advanced than others in that particular field. Some additional ones follow when the seal of the draft convention has been placed upon it, and the process will continue, however slowly, until eventually those countries which have not adopted that particular reform are left in isolation as noticeable as was the temerity of those which took the first step forward.” New Zealand, a comparatively advanced country, could not, in the Minister’s opinion, without disregarding its wider duty to assist progress in countries less fortunately situated than itself, hold itself aloof from the International Labour Conference on the score of having nothing much to gain from it. A better attitude for a country like the Dominion to adopt was to consider how much it could assist in giving other countries by its attendance at the conference.

What Mr Armstrong considered a serious weakness is that many of the employers’ delegates decline to take part in the consideration of certain subjects. All the member States are required to pay the expenses of non-Government delegates, New Zealand’s being E. J. Dash (workers’ delegate) and W. E. Andertou (employers). “No doubt,” says Mr Armstrong, “it was contemplated that those delegates would observe their obligation by contributing constructive work to the conference, .but in connection with the committee dealing with conditions in the textile industry, the British employer member occupying the position of vicepresident of the Textile Committee stated that, apart from the employer member of the United States of America and of France, the cniploycr members of the committee would refrain from discussing, from taking part in tho drafting of, or from voting on any single article as it came up for examination. The New Zealand employers’ delegate was not a member of this committee.”

Mr Armstrong adds: “They could have given much useful help in the framing of the convention. It is equally beyond question that, having accepted nomination to the conference with knowledge of the business to be done, and having accepted election to membership of tho committee, and presumably having accepted from their Governments payment of the usual travelling subsistence allowances, it was the common duty of all members of tho committee to give all possible assistance towards framing the convention on the best lines. It is clear that if such methods of discharging the duty of delegates to the conference were resorted to by other groups, the whole time of the conference would be wasted, and nothing would be capable of achievement. Repetitions of such incidents must necessarily raise in the minds of the Governments questions as to the value of paying from the public funds the expenses of delegates who do not discharge the duty which they assume in accepting nomination.” _Mr Armstrong mentions his intention to dismiss with the Government the local question of New Zealand’s method of representation at the conference.