BOARDS OF CONCILIATION.

Observer, Volume XXI, Issue 118, 17 August 1901, Page 2

BOARDS OF CONCILIATION.

Premier Seddon is Angry

MR SEDDON was anything but lair when he said in a burst of temper that the Conciliation Boards were riding " the thing " to death. The Conciliation Boards are simply administering the Act, the real position being that the Act is riding the industries of the country to death. It is useless for Mr Seddon to attempt to fasten the blame for thjs legislative blunder on the Boards of Conciliation. They have no power to suspend or soften it. Their duty is to. carry 'it out as it stands—simply this 'and nothing more. The Act is one of Mr Seddon's legislative fads, he forced it upon the country to please the trades unionists notwithstandingthe protests of the manufacturers that it would ruin colonial industry, and if employers are now shutting down their industries and clearing out of the country it is Mr Seddon and his Act that "are to blame, and not the Conciliation Boards appointed to administer the law. ••• ••• .». Mr Seddon made a great point in his speech at Wellington of the fact that 400 employers had bean cited in one industry in Auckland. Is this the fault of the Conciliation Board ? The Act says plainly that every employer in the particular industry in question shall be cited, and if the Board were to make exceptions, citing onp and leaving out another, what an outcry there would be. Also, a finding arrived at under such circumstances could not be legally binding on the employers who were not cited, and who had no opportunity of representing the circumstances of their particular case. If there were 4000 employers in the trade in dispute, instead of 400, the Conciliation Board would have no alternative under the present Act than to cite the whole lot. *•• ••• .«. Mr Seddon was also unfortunate in his allusion to Auckland, inasmuch as we have here the beat Conciliation Board in the colony. On both sides, it is. composed of able and broad-minded men, who approach the hearing of these disputes with minds as free from prejudice as men in such tribunals can possibly be. And, so far from tha Labour representatives being agi-

tators in any sense, they have shown an exceptional sense of the digjiitv of theif - ppsitipa by keeping themselves aloof from the Unions before the Boai'd. Ii the Labour members of the Southern Hoards, and notably Wellington, eoujd say as much, less discredit would have attached to the working oi the Act. Again, in its Chairman the Auckland Board has the services of a gentleman who has conscientiously striven in every case to act impartially between the conflicting interests, to ."discountenance anything in the way of personalities, .and to work an irritating- Act with us little vexation ns possible to those concerned. •c- .«. . c . It must also be conceded to the Auckland Conciliation Board that it has arranged an arnica b'fo settlement of more industrial dispute* than any other similar body in the colony. True, some of the cases have run 10 a great length, but it must l)c borne ju mmd that the Southern boards have not had before them any disputes of such »reat magnitude as those in connection w'nU tin- mining and timber interests. However, if our memory sevws. us right, the butchers' and carters' disputes in Wellington .were also very lengthy, and with "much less reason than in thf mining and saw-milling cases, where the Hoard hail to travel from one centre to the other to take evidence. ••• •<>• .(j. Naturally. .Mr Seddon is very angry when he reads that two manufacturers in Dunedin have closed clown, and are clearing out of the country, while the whole industrial interest, of the colony is in a state of unrest and terror. But he must not blame the Conciliation Boards for this. The, fault lies with the law that has created this unrest and terror. Only this week, an uncanny feeling has been created in Auckland by the story that the timber millers of the province an.' talking of closing down for three months, while the miningindustry is <|uite stagnant and threatens to be much worse. This is not tho» work of the Conciliation Boards. It is the effect of the law passed by Mr Seddon.