Conciliation and Arbitration.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 29, 17 July 1902, Page 18

Conciliation and Arbitration.

We observe that one Employers' Association has been individually consulted by its executive on the results of the operation of the Industrial Acts of 1894. The result is a statement of the position from an employer's point of view. No other answer than that given oould be expected from the nature of the questions •iked, and from the manner in which they were framed. Now, we have ever studiously avoided taking any side in the political diseasaions that from time to time rend the air, but we cannot refrain from commenting upon a notable omission in the list of questions put to an unnamed number of employers. Whoever framed the questions altogether omitted to ask about the effect of the labor laws upon the workers. Among the questions put to the employers there are many which refer to the alleged friction caused by the Act, to the restrictive tendency of it, and to the loss of time caused by diecusHing dispute?. But the cardinal point remains untouched, and that is that the existing law effectually forbids that disastrous form of industrial war known as strikes. Even one strike of any magnitude would bring more disaster in its train than a large number of disputes, settled by a recognised form of law. We are very much

afraid that in the movement now initiated there is the foreshadowing of a rebellion against the present Bystein, and on the grounds alleged this would be nothing short of a disaster were it successful.