AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19159, 16 November 1927, Page 9

AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY.

ARBITRATION SYSTEM. EMPLOYERS' CRITICISM. (BY CABLE—FHESS ASSOCIATION—COPTBIGHT.) (AUSTRALIAN AND K.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.) PERTH, November 15. Mr William Brooks, in his presidential address to the Central Council of the Employers' Federation, made a strong attack on the existing arbitration and industrial system. He said he had heard wearisome repetitions from politicians and academic theorists in favour of a get-together policy, whilst the inevitable result of the cast-iron law court industrial system was further to widen the breach between the emplovers and the employees and to entrust their fortunes and their national and industrial prosperity and development to the whim of judicial authorities, whose unimpeachable integrity was more than counterbalanced by 'the vagaries of their sentimental and impractical determination The employers were not averse to getting together, but they realised that round-table conferences were practically futile, with the present background of wig and gown power and finality. Both the Queensland and New South Wales industrial movements were almost entirely in the hands of Communists. The menace of centralised union domination, if unchecked, would exorcise a stranglehold on Australian industry and the development of private enterprise. He reviewed the harmful effects of union tactics and suggested as a remedy the transference to the Federal Government of full industrial control, thus securing uniformity, the substitution of conciliation for arbitration, the complete organisation of the employers in order that they might negotiate with the employees' organisations on an equal footing, and a reduction of Federal and State taxation directly affecting the primary and secondary industries. He urged the need for complete freedom of negotiations between Capital and Labour.