ALTERATION OF AWARD

Taranaki Daily News, 9 July 1929, Page 9

ALTERATION OF AWARD

ACTION OF ARBITRATION COURT. SUPREME COURT APPEALED TO. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. The Full Court, consisting of the Chief Justice (Hon. M. Myers) and Justices Herdman, Adams, Blair and Smith, was engaged this afternoon hearing the case of Arthur Edwin Butt, Invercargill, tobacconist, Vivian Simeon Jacob, Dunedin, tobacconist, and the Dunedin Tobacconists Industrial Union of Employers (plaintiffs) against Mr. Justice Frazer, Mr. George Thomas Booth and Mr. Alexander Lamont Monteath, members of the Arbitration Court (defendants). Plaintiffs are moving to have the Dunedin, Oamaru, Gore and Invercargill tobacconists’ assistants’ award moved into the Supreme Court and certain parts therein examined and quashed by the Court.

The award was made on March 4, 1927, and by a subsequent order made on March 12, 1929, the Arbitration Court altered the terms of the award to the effect that all persons employed as assistants in hairdressers’ and tobacconists’ shops within the area affected by the award must become members of the Otago Hairdressers’ and Tobacconists’ Assistants’ Industrial Union of Workers; that all such assistants not becoming members of the union should be dismissed from employment, and only members of the union be employed by such tobacconists and hairdressers.

The employers are attacking the alterations of the award on the grounds that they did not consent to the order varying the award and that such consent is necessary by law. That the alterations were beyond the jurisdiction of the Arbitration Court (inter alia) because their provisions amount to the creation of compulsory unionism, and that the order places an unwarranted restriction on employers in the choice of employees. For the plaintiffs Mr. J. F. B. Stevenson appeared, and for the defendants, Mr. F. W. Ongley. The Court was adjourned and the case will proceed to-morrow.