HE DEPRECATES STRENGTH.

Wairarapa Age, 25 March 1924, Page 4

HE DEPRECATES STRENGTH.

The outlook for the deliberations of the Railway Wages Board is not a very bright one if Mr M. J. Mack, the secretary of the A. 5.8.5., was speaking with any authority. Here is a board consisting of an equal number of representatives from the Department and the employees, with an impartial chairman. It is set up to investigate the wages question and to endeavour to arrive at a (air decision. Mr Mack, fully realising its importance, opens by saying that he deprecates the use 1 of strength, meaning presumably force. He proceeds to give facts aud figures to strengthen the men’s ease, and winds up with the comforting announcement that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants has ‘ ‘ definitely made up its mind not to agree to the extension of hours from 44 to 48 per week no matter what the result of the conference might be.” If this is a fact then the investigation is a farce. It cannot be impartial or competent to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion if one of the parties has determined in advance that it will not accept a decision that does not suit it. Mr Mack says that arbitration is on trial. It is nothing of the sort. It is not arbitration at all but merely an insistence on one’s own point of view.