THE STATE AND THE ARBITRATION LAW.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13199, 4 February 1905, Page 7

THE STATE AND THE ARBITRATION LAW.

The decision of the Arbitration Court with relation to the position occupied by tho State coalmines under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act involves no novelty. It ia expressly provided in the State Coal Mines Act that any award relating to mines in the industrial district in which any State coal mine is situated shall, subject to such variations as ill tho opinion of the Court are necessitated by looal circumstances, apply to such State mine. To that extent, therefore, the amenability of the State to the arbitration law, so far as its conduct of its mines is concerned, is clearly recognised. All that the Court had to do in the case in which it gave its decision at Westporfc this week was apparently to determine whether the necessary preliminaries had been observed in order to bring the State management in proper form before it. Tho management not having been cited, tbo Court was compelled to hold that the Stato would not be bound by an award made after a hearing at which it w,ns not represented, lint power has been reserved to cite the management of tho State mines as a party to the dispute that is pending at tho instance of the union of workers at Denniston upon the application of any party competent to ask that tho State shall be made amenable to the award. It can scarcely be doubted that that application will be made in due course, and that the effect will ho that the State mine will be placed on an equal footing, if it is not so at present, with the other mines on the West Coast; and that will be only just and reasonable. Upon the general proposition that the same conditions sliould be observed in the State mine as, in the opinion of the Court, should be observed in other mines on tho West Coast, wherein the same class of mining work is prosecntcd, there can be very little difference of opinion. The case for tho application to 'the State mines of tho provisions of the arbitration law is much stronger than it was for such an extension of the terms of the Act as gives the Court jurisdiction to settle an industrial disputo if any should arise between t-lie Crown and the railway servants of the colony. For the State coal mine is to all intents and purposes in competition with private enterprise, of which the operations are regulated by the Court under the law. It would consequently be improper and unfair that the State mine managementshould bo exempted from the conditions which the Court may consider it necessary to apply to the conduct of privatelyowned mines. And it is satisfactory for this reason that the Government was induced to include in tho State Coal .Mines Act the provision relating to the arbitration law that wo have quoted. It is true, as the Court points out, that the Act provides! no machinery for enforcing an award to which tho management of the State mine is a party. That is attributable to the circumstance that the Government successfully resisted an attempt on the part of the Opposition to have tho Minister of Mines declared to bo an employer within tho meaning of the Arbitration Act and to have every worker in the mine made subject to the provisions of the Act. jVIr Seddoh resisted this .proposal because, he said, the Crown cannot be placed on the same plane with respect to employment, either in its coal mines or on its railways or in other branches of the public service, as is occupied by private employers. The Premier's view on the matter is changing. In a. speech on the West Coast last month he indicated that it might be desirable that all branches of the Government service should be brought within the scope of the provisions of the conciliation and arbitration law. And, if he remains a few years longer in New Zealand, be will probably cee tiiis accomplished.