DREDGE WORKERS AND COMPULSORY ARBITRATION

Grey River Argus, 21 May 1941, Page 8

DREDGE WORKERS AND COMPULSORY ARBITRATION

ONCE AGAIN, with, the publicity given in our last week’s issue to the meeting of the West Coast Dredge Workers, the Arbitration Court with its ungenerous workings is brought before our notice. The dredge-workers complain, with ample justification, that they are no nearer than ever to a 40-hour week. They point out that theirs is the only industry in the country which works a full 48-hour week »the whole year round, and that, each lime this qestiuon has come before the Arbitration Court for review, a different reason has been advanced as an excuse for maintaining the status quo.

Numerous examples can be quoted of other trade unions under the I. C. &A. Act whose awards arc extremely unsatisfactory in one respect or another. Where unions of this class enjoy comparatively good awards, it may be pointed (nt that the quality of the awards is due to the organisational strength of those unions, which have been able to use their strength to bring their cases very forcibly to the ( Court’s notice.

On the other hand, we have unions like the United Mineworkers which negotiate their agreements by direct bargaining with the employers. Such unions are able to reach agreements speedily and satisfactorily on the basis of their organised strength, without the delay and uncertainty which recourse to the Arbitration Court, entails. It is high time the workers realised that the Arbitration Court is merely a snare to sap the militancy of the trade union movement. There cannot, be collaboration between the boss and the -worker, whose interests are absolutely opposed An “independent” arbitrator must be biassed one way or the other. And we need hardly point out that very rarely indeed does it happen that a magistrate, trained and educated in the traditions of the Capitalist system, has any sympathy towards the working-class.