POWERS OF ARBITRATION

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1929, Page 14

POWERS OF ARBITRATION

ARGUMENT IN APPEAL CASE. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, July 9. In the appeal case, Butt and others versus Fraser and others, Mr. Stevenson, for plaintiffs, submitted that the Arbitration Court had gone beyond its jurisdiction in making the order complained of. The court might give preference to unionists, but could not prevent non-unionists from working. The court had no power to force any person to join a union against hit will. The Arbitration Court had no statutory authority to deal with the relations of employers as between themselves, nor with the relations of workers as between workers and a workers’ union, but it could deal with the relations between employers and workers. The only relations affected by the order objected to were not the relations between employers and workers. The history of the Arbitration Acts showed that Parliament never intended to confer on the court power to establish compulsory unionism. Mr. Ongley, for the defendants, contended that the only function of th© Supreme Court with regard to the Arbitration Court was to see that the latter kept within its jurisdiction. In this case, he submitted, the court kept within its jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court could not interfere in the matter. Being an industrial dispute within the meaning of the Arbitration Court, ’ that court could deal with it in any I manner it thought fit, immune from inI terference by any other court. The court reversed the decision.