TERMS OF AWARDS IN DOMINION

Southland Times, Issue 23947, 13 October 1939, Page 8

TERMS OF AWARDS IN DOMINION

STATEMENT MADE BY COMMISSIONER

RELUCTANCE TO AGREE TO LONG PERIODS

(United Press Association) WELLINGTON, October 12. Comment on the general reluctance of parties to industrial disputes to come to an agreement on awards for longer periods than 12 months was made by the Conciliation Commissioner, Mr M. J Reardon, when the Dominion dispute in the printing and related trades was being heard before him today. “I have been more than three years in this position,” Mr Reardon said, and I don’t think I have had five cases where the parties have agreed to an award for a longer term than 12 months. When I was an interested party 15 or 20 years ago, ,we often agreed to a three-year-term. A workers’ assessor: There have been changed conditions. They are fluctuating now. Years ago they were not. Mr Reardon: I think that is what is crowding the amount of work the Arbitration Court has had to face. It is true that there have been other circumstances, such as illness and so forth, which are unavoidable. “It is clear to me,” he continued, that the Court has made up its mind to a certain course of action, and 1 tninK you are wasting your energies going to Court when you know you will get what the Court has said you will get. Mr Reardon added that when the Court was prepared to make an alteration in wages it would take a typical case and allow the parties to bring evidence on the question. The agent for the workers, Mr A. Baxter, said the council was not considering the question of increases in general. It was considering- only those which came under the Courts pronouncement.

“With all due respect to you as men, and you are entitled tq that, Mr Baxter said to the employers’ assessors, “some of your complexes do not correspond with ours, from a worker’s angle.