THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 1907. THE ARBITRATION ACT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13995, 30 August 1907, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 1907. THE ARBITRATION ACT.

It is evident that the adjourned meeting of th© New Zealand Employers' Federation at Wellington .was well timed. For oa the day of the commencement of the meeting the Minister of Labour brought down in Parliament his proposals for the amendment of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act/ the operation of which constitutes the raison d'etre of the Federation. These proposals, as will be mn fro m the synopsis of them which appears elsewhere in this issue, are exceedingly important, involving, in one respect, an amendment of a radical but not unexpected character in the law. With most of them, moreover, w> think the Employers' Federation will not have much reason to complain, even though they do not touch any of the "five unmistakable defects" which, according to Mr Scott, secretary of the Otago Employers' Association, whose opinions are expressed at some length in the paper read by him before tho Federation on Wednesday and published by us yesterday, " have largely contributed to the failure of the Act to bring about the desired result "—that is, of preventing strikes. That Mi- W. P. Beeves contemplated that the Act should be applied simply for the purpose of preventing strikes—that the law should be invoked,, virtually as a last resort, to effect' a'settlement of disputes which had been earned to a critical point,—that he hoped that, it might be effective'to secure the object Ire had in view, and that it has not operated to prevent strikes ig, of course, perfectlv clear. But we do not feel that we should be justified in holding that, on. that account, there has been, as Mr Scott declares, j: a breakdown of the Act.' A law is i designed, by the institution of a code i of punishment, to discourage the < commiasion of tho offences against i which it is aimed. No law that has yet been devised has. been so success- i ful, however, as to prevent .breaches I of it, and, judged by the -ordinary i tests, \to cannot admit that the Ai-bi- i tratiou Act ta proved a failure. {i Of the two strikes that have occurred ! < in New Zealand during the past ' : thirteen years one was.a trivial affair, ', 1 and those who participated in the i i

other clearly under-estinuited the risks of pecuniary loss they were incurring vliea they left their' employment. The reconfc decision of Uie Court of Appeal that the fines that are imposed upon persons convicted of breaches of the Act are penalties and not debts, and that the offenders may be visited with imprisonment in default of payment of the fines, will, however, cause any men who may be disposed to strike in future to think not once only but many times before actually "talcing the decisive step. Mr Scott points out that in the event of the coal miners of the West Coast, a. very numerous body of men, deciding to strike the existing legislation would be still ineffective since the gaols of the colony would not hold them all in addition to the ordinary prison population. The Government, however, meets this objection in the amending Bill by the inclusion in it of a provision which seems to us likely to prove distinctly a further deterrent of striking. It is proposed that when men are fined for striking or when they have incurred any other debt trader the Acb power shall h given to the Department to recover the amount by instalments from successive employers of theirs until tho debt is discharged, so that a man could only evade the ultimate payment of a fine by departure from the colony.

The proposal in the amending Bill to abolish Conciliation Boards and to replace them by Industrial Councils apparently follows on the .lines that were sketched by tho Minister of Labour during the recess, the Councils being modelled on the Victorian system of Wages Board's. The curious device by which the Minister seeks to meet the claims of the organised workers for statutory preference to unionists was foreshadowed by our pa.rliamenj.ary cor respondent some time ago. It is a novel proposal, about which opinions will, we fancy, l>9 found to differ widely. It empowers tho Court to order that non-unionists receiving the benefit of an award shall' contribute an 'amount equal to that contributed by the unionists towards the expense of obtaining the award. And as the award may be- said to bo tho outcome of the existence of the union in the industry affected and of its efforts uninterruptedly continued through the period of its existence, it is conceivable that the non-union-ist might find himself required to contribute regularly towards the support of a union in the control of which, however, he had no voice. The effect in such circumstances would probably be that, in order that he might obtain tho same privileges aa other contributors of sums equal to those contributed by him, h© would become a. member of the union. In this sense the proposal contained in the Bill would produce compulsory unionism—without compulsion. But there are many unionists who dislike compulsory unionism, fearing that it might involve the loss by those who are now unionists of some of the benefits they enjoy, and the provision will also be unfavourably regarded by the non-unionists, who form, as Mr Ballinger said at the meeting of the Employers' federation on Wednesday, a large majority of the workers of the colony. Wβ have a good deal of sympathy with the unionists in. their complaint that non-unionists obtain the advantage of, while they pay none of the cost incidental to, the awards of 'the Court, but any proposal to remedy their grievance must bs carefully scrutinised lest its effect should be to create an injustice to non-unionists. There arc other points of interest in the proposals contained in Mr Millar's Bill, but those which we have mentioned are the outstanding' features of the measure. Whatever view may ba taken about some of its provisions, the Bill strikes us as being the embodiment of a genuine attempt to strengthen the arbitration system. If we were to endorse all that Mr Scott said on Wednesday in condemnation of the system, we should ba driven to hope that the- Bill would be defeated in the belief that such a result would bring about a termination of the plan of settling trade disputes and adjusting trade conditions through the intervention of State tribunals. We are satisfied, however, that the case against the existing methods 19 not really so- strong as Mr Scott represents it. Mr Scott charges the Arbitration Act, in fact, with having failed to accomplish ends which it was never expected to accomplish. The Act, he says, has not improved the quality or the quantity of the work tlrafc is done in the colony, and it has not fostered trade. But did anyone expect that ib= would be productive of good results in these directions? And while there have undoubtedly been glaring instances of a limitation of output on the part of workmen during recent years, this is certainly not a fonn of industrial dishonestv that is unknown in countries wherV the arbitration system does not.prevail. Wo question also, whether Mr Scott's assertion that more friction obtains between employers and employees now than before the Act cams into operation rests upon entirely coirvincing evidence. Even . ■ though, through an abuse of its provisions, the Act has been employed as an instrument for the manufacture of disputes, the feeling among the majority of employers in the colony is, we believe, that the law has proved sufficiently satisfactory to lead them to hope it may be permanently retained on the Statute Book, while the majority of the workers are also, so far as we can judge, agreed that the Act is a decidedly beneficial measure, '