AUSTRALIAN LABOUR

Feilding Star, Volume 7, Issue 2134, 13 February 1929, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN LABOUR

ANTAGONISM TO ARBITRATION

‘•'POIJTTCAL CATCRAVORDS’’

(Aust. and N.Z. Cable)

Melbourne, Feb. 12

The Australian Tractes Union Council, sitting in Melbourne to-day replied t 0 telegrams rrom the At-torney-Genera I' (Mr Latham) appealing for peace in trtve. timber industry. The reply discloses an uncompromising attitude towards the Federal Arbitration Court, and adds: “The present industrial turmoil is the result of your Government’s attack on workers’ conditions. Government can cure the position as easily as it caused it, by calling oil attacks o ,n the .workers’ standards ot living and the vital 44-hou r principle.” The Attorney-General further replied: “My Government declines to accept the suggestion that the decisions of tiie Court are to be accepted by unions only when they are in their favour. The trades unions themselves joined in procuring , the submission of the 44-hour question, to the Court. 1. greatly regret you can give no better response to my appeal than to repent discredited political catchwords.” An application by the Federated Carters’ and Drivers’ Union to withdraw claims from the Federal Arbitration Court was to-clay dismissed, by Judge Lukin, who pointed out that no union had the right, to exercise the option to withdraw claims from the Court without the consent of the respondents.