EMPLOYERS INDIGNANT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 156, 30 June 1914, Page 8

EMPLOYERS INDIGNANT.

THE BRICKLAYERS' STRIKE,

DISCUSSED BY CONCILIATION

COUNCIL.

Tttfl recent strike of bricklayer* employed on tho Grammar School contract evoked some very pointed remarks by representatives of the employers at the sitting of the Conciliation Council yesterday, when the terms of a proposed new bricklayers' i award were discussed by three assessors from the Auckland Bricklayers' Union, and three from the Builders' Association, who met under the presidency of the conciliation commissioner, Mr. T. Harle Giles. . . At the commencement of the proceedings, Mr. G. Baildon, who conducted the case for the Builders' Association, said that it had been an open question whether assessors from the association would attend the sitting of the council after their treatment by #ie union. When there could be a bricklayers' strike on a job, which was totally opposed to the terms of an award, it seemed' a waste of time to attempt to conciliate at all, and the Builders' Association desired to lodge a protest against i the attitudo the union had taken up to- | wards their responsibility in deliberately ! committing a breach of the award.

Later in the proceedings Mr. C. Grosvenor, who represented 15 of tho parties cited in the dispute, said that as the officer of the Auckland Branch of the New Zealand Employers' Federation he desired to enter a most emphatic protest against any agreement whatever being entered into with the Bricklayers' Union. Here was a case,.he said, in which a union had been granted an award,, and had deliberately flouted it during its currency, and figuratively speaking had torn it up. Such a anion should not be recognised as worthy of trust. Mr. Grosvenor continued that the Builders' Association had to some extent committed itself by submitting counter proposals to those of the union, and he considered it would have been more to the point to submit the whole question to the Arbitration Court for a ruling. On behalf of the union it was contended that tho fact that the men had left off work was not due to any instructions from the union, and eventually the council con- ; tinued its deliberations.