WAGE FIXING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 24 November 1928, Page 8

WAGE FIXING

ARBITRATION COURT DUTIES (By Telegraph—Special to “The Mail") AUCKLAND, 23rd November. Wage-fixing and the duties of the Arbitration Court were matters commented on at the annual meeting of the Auckland Provincial Employers' Association yesterday. “It is not so much the number of unemployed- as the improbability of a large proportion of them being absorbed again in the industrial occupations from which they were discharged which makes the situation so serious, and leads to the question whether I lie present wage-fixing system has not in some industries entirely collapsed/ said the president (Mr Albert Spencer). “Employers have not been able to successfully resist, and in many cases have not attempted to resist, labour demands for increased wages, reduced hours, and other concessions.” The employers had accepted the apparently inevitable, but they had been forced to put off hands when it was found they were not earning the wages they had demanded. The position had been aggravated by a number of tiie unemployed having started work “on their own.” Being under no restriction, and having no wages to pay, they had cut prices in some cases below pre-war level. As this position had been brought about by the Labour unions, the onus was on them to find a solution. Mr Spencer said the original intention that the Arbitration Court should be a court of appeal for disputes which could not be settled by conciliation bad gradually, and, perhaps inevitably, been lost sight of. The Court had become practically a wage-fixing tribunal.