CONCILIATION ABORTIVE

Evening Star, Issue 23349, 19 August 1939, Page 16

CONCILIATION ABORTIVE

MINISTERS' STATEMENTS USED AS ARGUMENT WORKERS' ASSESSOR OBJECTS [Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, August 19. A protest against the statements of Ministers of the Oown being used by the employers’ assessors as an argument against the workers at conciliation councils was made by Mr P. M. Butler when the Conciliation Council which considered tho North Island Borough Councils and! other local bodies’ dispute was sitting yesterday. He said it was a remarkable thing that the employers’ main argument consisted in quoting Ministers of the Crown against tho workers, though the Ministers had) never, said that low wages should be stabilised. It was unfair that statements made by Ministers months previously on abstract matters should be trotted out at tho Conciliation Council. “ They quote these matters against us, and l the statements are not relevant to the matters in dispute, and we take objection to it. I think Ministers should be given the opportunity of objecting to it. It is the only argument I have heard put up by tho employers to-day about our offer on wages, andl it is a weak one.” Mr D. I. M'Donald, the employers’ agent, said statements by Ministers of the Crown regarding stabilisation were only a minor argument. The court had its policy regarding wage rates, which was decided by Mr Justice O’Regan’s court in September, 1937, in respect to hourly rates, followed some months later by a further indication of the court’s mind on the question of weekly wages. Since those pronouncements the court had. not shown, except in cases where it could be proved there was justification for increasing particular rates, that in its opinion conditions were such as to justify increases in wage rates, which had been brought up to the court’s standard. Nothing was agreed to by the council, and tho Commisioner thought the court would send the dispute back to the council; and he hoped they would meet under circumstances that would enable them to do what had been done in the past—reach a settlement. Mr Butler said the court had no authority to send a dispute back to the council. The Commissioner (Mr Ritchie) said the council sitting had not been wholly a waste of time.