POSSIBLE INJUSTICE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 19 December 1936, Page 10

POSSIBLE INJUSTICE

THE 1931 RATES COURT’S INDICATION (United Press Association) WELLINGTON, 18th December. The possibility of injustice and the existence of anomalies arising from the indication of the Court of Arbitration that where no agreement is reached in conciliation council in industrial disputes it will revert to the 1931 standard of wages and conditions, were mentioned by Mr M. J. Reardon, Conciliation Commissioner, at a sitting of a conciliation council to-day. The Court’s original pronouncement was accompanied by a qualifying clause excepting applications, in” which there were special circumstances.

The Court, said Mr Reardon, found itself snowed up with work and had asked, parties in all industrial disputes to come closer to agreement than they had been able at the first conciliation council sittings. For the purpose of . guiding, parties the Court had stated "that if would decide any unsettled question of hours, . but that* if agreement could not-be reached on wages and conditions, of work generally the parties would have to revert to the 1931 standards. . That might create an injustice in. some cases, and , there were certain anomalies in a number of cases because conditions had changed substantially since 1931. The Court, however, took the view that it had no time to rectify anomalies, and it aimed to catch up on its work with the assistance of the interested parties, leaving to a future occasion the reviewing of what might be regarded by one side or the other as anomalies.