NEWSPAPER PROPRIETORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18022, 22 February 1922, Page 8

NEWSPAPER PROPRIETORS.

MISGUIDED UNIONS.

[by iexjoraph.—pbess association.] v WELLINGTON. Tueeday. At the annual meeting of the New Zealand Newspaper Proprietors' Association in moving the adoption of the report and balance-sheet, Mr. Charles Earle, chairman, said the future outlook for newsprint supplies was regarded as uncertain, prices still being unsteady, while business was depressed.

Referring to the industrial situation, Mr. Earle remarked on the conference of the representatives of the printing trade employees held in Christchurch, and said it was not likely the Arbitration Court would be influenced by the transparent propaganda of that conference. But t'hey could not allow it to pass unchallenged. It might be thought that under existing conditions talk of increased wages would be abandoned as too ioolish for sensible men to waste their time over, and that the trade unions would centre tbeir attention on the more pressing problem of devising means to ensure continuity of employment for their members. Apparently regardless of the changed conditions, unions were following along the old lines of concentrating their energies on an endeavour to bolster up the present abnormally high rate of wages. Their latest procedure could only be regarded as a blatant attempt to bluff the Arbitration Court into a continuance of the existing awards by demanding more than the awards now gave them, Mr. Justice Frazer's recent pronouncement conveyed the impression that this sort of humbug carried little weight. It was a reflection on the Court that such claims should be advanced in face of the fall in the cost of living, and the prevailing depression in the newspaper business and industry generally. . Mr. Earle was re-elected president.