FIXATION OF WAGES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3898, 27 November 1928, Page 67

FIXATION OF WAGES.

A CAUSE OF UNEMPLOYMENT. ONUS NOW ON LABOUR UNIONS. AUCKLAND, November 22 Wage-fixing and the duties of the Arbitration Court were matters commented on at the annual meeting of the Auckland Provincial Employers’ Association. It is not so much the number of unemployed as the improbability of a large proportion of them being absorbed again in the industrial occupations from which they were discharged which makes the situation so serious, and leads to the question whether the present wage-fixing system has not in some industries entirely collapsed,” said the president, Mr Albert Spencer. “ The employers have not been able to resist successfully, and in many cases have not attempted to resist, the labour demands for increased wages, reduced hours, and other concessions.” The employers had accepted the apparently inevitable, but had been forced to put off hands when it was found that they were not earning the wages they had demanded. The position had been aggravated by a number of the unemployed having started work oh their own account. Being under no restrictions, and having no wages to pay they had cut the prices—in some cases below the prewar level. As this position had been brought about by the labour unions the onus was on them to find a solution. Mr Spencer said that the original intention that the Arbitration Court should be a court of appeal for disputes which could not be settled by conciliation had gradually, and perhaps inevitably, been lost sight of, and the court had become practically a wage-fixing tribunal.