CHANGES PENDING

Southland Times, Issue 21578, 16 December 1931, Page 5

CHANGES PENDING

ARBITRATION COURT. ABOLITION FORESHADOWED. (Per United Press Association.) Auckland, December 15. “It will mean direct action and that is playing into the hands of the Communists,” said Mr E. J. Phelan, a prominent union secretary, when discussing the Hon. W. Downie Stewart’s remarks yesterday regarding the Arbitration Court. Mr Phelan said he admitted that the abolition of the Court would suit the militant section of Labour but it was looked on with grave concern by the genuine trade union movement.

Mr W. E. Parry, M.P., said the workers desired a settlement of industrial disputes by the Court and that they did not want to revert to the old method of fighting it out by the use of a strike, which went hand in hand with misery and waste. Mr Parry said the Government was not given a mandate to render the Arbitration Act abortive. Industrial centres had unmistakably voiced their disapproval of any interference with the Court.

“Until something is done to help the farmer the rest of New Zealand is bound to have unemployment,” said the Minister of Finance, the Hon. W. Downie Stewart, when replying to a Farmers’ Union deputation at Auckland. “The whole thing at present is to get down the internal costs. We have on the stocks some proposals regarding the Arbitration Act, although I do not think they will help nearly as much as the farmers think they will. I thought the best way might be by the suspension of the awards, but all the experts on this subject say that that would not meet the case at all, and that we would have to alter the constitution of the court.” He added that it appeared it was the irritating conditions attached to the awards that were the cause of the trouble.”