The Press Thursday, October 27, 1927. The Arbitration Act.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19142, 27 October 1927, Page 8

The Press Thursday, October 27, 1927. The Arbitration Act.

Resolutions protesting against the proposed ameudment of the Arbitration Act are coming thick and fast from the trade unions. The Bill is described variously as ''an attack inspired by " the employing class on the standard "of living of the working class - ' and '' an act of war on the welfare of industrious citizens.'' One union gathering says that the Bill, " if persisted in, "is destined to result in industrial "strife"; another (a meeting of trade union secretaries) that the proposed amendments, if they become law. " will "'ensure a state of chaos and guerrilla " warfare " between workers and employers, who, this resolution says (not waggishly but quite seriously), "have '' worked harmoniously under the Act." A,third union meeting declared that the proposals " must result in industrial " warfare with all its attendant misery " and disorganisation." If the Government were proposing to abolish the Arbitration Act, it might be possible to understand this language, although one might smile at the sudden discovery by the unions of their passionate love for an Act which for many years they have been assailing as an implement of capitalist tyranny. Actually the Government's proposals leave altogether untouched the fundamental principles of the Act; nothing more is proposed than that the farming industry shall be left outside the Act, that the Judge's colleagues shall be arbitrators appointed ad hoc instead of permanent arbitrators, that piecework rates shall be permitted, and that the Minister may summon to a conference the representatives of both sides whenever a strike is threatened or appears to be likely. There is nothing, obviously, in any of these proposals which can justify, or explain, the uproar in the union rooms. The explanation is to be found perhaps in the fact that one of the proposals in the Bill is that the union's arbitrator in any dispute must be a bona tide worker in the trade concerned. Professibnal secretaries of unions will still be able to appear before the Court, but it is easy to understand that in the provision that the union's arbitrator must be a bona fide worker 1 they may detect the thin end'of the wedge, the dreaded beginning of a new day in which the workers will conduct their own business instead of placing themselves in the hands of the professional exploiters and fomenters of discontent. The unions will rejoice at the appearance of an unexpected ally on the other side, namely, the Advisory Board of the New Zealand Employers' Federation, which opposes the Bill on four grounds: lack of suitable arbitrators, lack of provision for continuity of policy, danger from irresponsible arbitrators, and the impossibility, of the Court's doing its work in the time i available. It is perfectly true, as we ! pointed out on Saturday last, that permanent arbitrators are perhaps preferable to arbitrators ad hoc, but there is really no good reason fof supposing that the change proposed by the Government will be a change for the worse. The truth is that the Employers' Federation is vaguely uneasy, without sufficient reason, just as the unions, are alarmed without reason at all, about the proposed change in the constitution of the Court. The constitution of tlte Court, as a matter of plain fact, is not of much consequence at this stage in the development of industrial regulation. The Bill itself is not of much consequence, since it is little more than a minor repair of a machine that ought to be, scrapped.