THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 1908. INDUSTRIAL ARBITRATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13766, 3 June 1908, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 1908. INDUSTRIAL ARBITRATION.

Defence of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act is a necessary and recognised part of the functions of a Minister for Labour, and the public will accept the commendations of Mr. Millar with all the more courtesy because in the amending Bill, of which he is the author, he has placed his finger upon certain weaknesses which threaten its ultimate destruction unless promptly and effectively remedied. It is very true that that Act has been generally resorted to by the labour unions, which it has done so much to foster and establish, and that the great bulk of the city workers of the Dominion are employed tinder conditions set by Arbitration Court awards. But it is fair to assume that this state of affairs exists solely because the general tendency of industrial matters has been towards greater activity and increased wages, and because the awards of the Court have almost invariably decreed advanced wages, reduced hours, and other improved conditions. For not only have the best and friendliest critics of the Industrial Arbitration principle agreed from its initiation as actual law that only when bad times came, and reduced wages, could its practical application to industrial life be regarded as tested, but within the past year 0/ two it has been plainly evidenced that while labour unions acclaim arbitration when the}' gain by it, they are by no means so enthusiastic over arbitration when they think they can attain their purposes by oldfashioned and brutal methods. Mr.Millar is shrewd enough to see that no Act can possibly stand which is not regarded with equal respect and obeyed with equal certainty by all of the various parties to which it may be applied, and that to retain the Industrial Arbitration Act upon the Statute Book some method must be devised for giving the awards made under its provisions as great authority over the workers as they have over the employers. Moreover, he realises, as all intelligent men realise, that to attempt to settle the infinite variety of technical questions which arise in trade disputes before Courts whose members cannot possibly have the necessary technical knowledge, is not calculated to make industrial awards satisfactory and equitable.

Of the machinery of the Act, only the Arbitration Court remains in active working, for though we have a. present instance in Auckland of a special industrial conciliation board, formed under the Act, this is quite exceptional, and the old Conciliation Boards have- long disappeared. So unsatisfactory were the Conciliation Boards, which had all the lack of technical knowledge of the Arbitration Court, with .a still more marked lack of judicial experience, that to save the basic principle of the Act it was.found necessary to authorise the taking of disputes directly into the Court, which practically killed the Conciliation Board section of the measure. Mr. Miliar now proposes to strengthen the Act by instituting, under legal safeguards, the ancient and honourable method of arranging all labour difficulties, i.e., by providing for a representative meeting of employers and employed in the particular line affected by any dispute, which body is to be presided over by an indeI pendent chairman, and to dissolve when they have decided upon the I question brought before them. It is by such a method that the 1 tramway dispute is now being quietly settled, the only difference being that the Tramways Company and the tramway employees have mutually pledged themselves to abide by the award, while under Mr. Millar's proposal appeal may be taken to the Arbitration Court. The Minister for Labour, speaking to his constituents at Dunedin, said that he " believed the more they could bring workers and employers together the more chance there .was of a better feeling between them." With this sentiment, and with the proposed amendment to the Act providing for what may be termed " industrial councils,'' wc altogether agree. There are very few differences which cannot be equitably settled by fairminded employers sitting in conference with reasonable and practical workmen ; and the questions upon which they may differ are essentially the questions which an Arbitration Court might satisfactorily deal with. Mr. Millar's amendment for the exclusion of the paid agitator from the unions organised and registered under the Act, and from any part in these industrial councils, is of im- ; mense importance, and deserves the support not only of every employer, i but of every genuine unionist. The genuine differences of opinion between employers and employed in any trade or calling are sufficiently serious in themselves without introducing the disturbing factor of professional disturbers of the industrial peace, whose trade it is to cuh.ivatc an ill-feeling, upon which they thrive, and who know uothing of flic sympathy which links together Ihe employers and the workmen of any specialised trade.

We cannot agree so heartily with the proposal of the Minister for Labour to compel employers to collect Arbitration Court tines by retaining 20 per cent, of the defaulting workman':; ■ wage. This appears hardly less undesirable and objectionable than the quite impracticable proposition of the AttorneyGeneral that no employer should be allowed to employ a workman who was under the ban of an unpaid fine. It is not fair to employers, nor calculated to strengthen the kindly sympathy between employers and employed, so necessary to industrial peace, to make an Arbitration Court bailiff of any employer. Such a "garnishee"' upon wages would be unpopular in any case, as is proved by restrictions upon the practice having become more and more marked in those civilised States where it

was once in common use; and it would be all the more unpopular and the source of great personal illfeeling since the employer who withheld wages would frequently have been a party to the case in which the line had been inflicted. The Arbitration Court ought to collect its fines from individuals by ordinary process of law; but if might well strengthen its authority over defaulting recalcitrant unions by suspending all "preference to unionists" for a term of years wherever unions had defied the law under which "preference" had been granted to them. This would be making the punishment fit the crime, and would enable employers to defend themselves against any organisation which only obeyed the law when it suited it to do so. While discussing these important and sweeping amendments, not suggested by enemies of the Act, but by the Minister for Labour and the At-torney-General, we must not overlook the Premier's declaration that to make it workable and to prevent energy and wages being reduced to a common dead level, some scheme of classifying workers and wages will have to be attached to the Act. The idea is good, and the need for some such amendment evident to all who see how badly the Act is affecting the energy and application of workmen and the mutual co-operation of workmen and employers. But no definite suggestion as to how this is to be done has been advanced by Sir Joseph Ward, and we are afraid that to make a satisfactory scheme of this kind will be found the most difficult of all the difficult amendments that it is proposed to make to our much-vaunted Conciliation and Arbitration Act.