The Dominion. MONDAY, JUNE 13, 1910. THE ARBITRATION ACT.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 841, 13 June 1910, Page 6

The Dominion. MONDAY, JUNE 13, 1910. THE ARBITRATION ACT.

We gave on Friday a lengthy digest of the report which is to be presented to the Wellington Employers' Association at its annual meeting to-day. This report is worth special notice for two reasons. In the first place the questions discussed in it arc very important, and, in the second place, the report as a whole is more ambitious than usual. We should like to think that this means that the Association is seeking to follow the example of the Canterbury Association, which has for years greatly excelled the other Associations in ability to furnish thoughtful and penetrating comment upon the problems of the Arbitration Act. The report makes it abundantly clear that the employers are dissatisfied ,with tho Act, and very uneasy as to what further troubles the future may contain. An' attempt has been made to suggest remedies for some of the most obvious disadvantages under which the law _ places the employers, and this evidence of a practical spirit is to be commended. At the same timo it is impossible not to feel that if the members of the Association were to make a serious study of the Act as an economic and social force they would withdraw some of the amendments they propose. No charge of unsoundness, however,' can lie against the. proposal, or rather the suggestion, that assessors should be done away with and that the Conciliation. Commissioner should preside unaided over the conferences between workers and employers. The spirit of conciliation, where it exists, would certainly have a better chance under this, system; since the absence of assessors would throw a greater responsibility upon the disputing pavties. It is noteworthy that the report is careful to define the limits of tho new Act's success. It is satisfactory "in so far as the settlement of disputes" is concerned, but of courso that is not necessarily an unmixed blessing. Faced with excessive demands, which are made as a mere "try-on," the employers cannot afford, so they hold, to stand by what they consider to be their just rights. Rather than incur the charge of wanton hostility to peaceful settlements, they avert a reference to tho Court by conceding more than they feel is due from them. To call a system that works out in that way a system of conciliation is manifestly a severe stretching of language. A point of great difficulty is raised in the suggestion that the Act should be amended so as to provide that no award or industrial agreement shall affect the employment of any worker "who, being a permanent employee in any shop or factory, is employed in renovating or repairing the shop, factory, or, plant in or about which he is employed." This amendment is designed to meet a position that arises in slack seasons. An employer, not wanting to shorten hands in a slack season, must at present pay his men award rates. He can dismiss his men, of course, and take them or others on again when trade improves with him. But wise employers do not like putting men on and off. If ho could be relieved of the necessity to pay award wages, the employer would be able to use some of his men in the slack season doing the inferior work of cleaning up and renovating his shop. The reasonableness of this suggestion, from any point of view, cannot be disputed, but it is almost impossible to press it with any hope of success. As a practical remedy for an undoubted weakness of the Act it is doomed from the beginning, but it is certainly well worth putting before Parliament or the Government as a sort of test question as to principle. Another important suggestion for amendment is made in the report, and one which wo are afraid cannot be tolerated unless it is greatly modified. "In view of the cancellation by a number of unions of their registration under the Act, and of the freedom from penalty for striking they thus secure," the committee of the Association thinks the law in regard - to striking' should be amended "by widening the scope of the strike clauses of the Act so as to embrace unions (whether registered under the Act or not) or any body of workers acting in concert, whether in _a_ union or not, with special provision for the punishment of strikers who endeavour to stop supplies of domestic requirements in order to secure their demands." The social and economic case against the Act is so strong that we cannot conceive how the Association can want Hit! restrictive evils of the Act to run outside the territory it now covers. We have always held that the right to strike is a natural and defensible right that must not be destroyed save where it has been surrendered for other privileges. If a union chooses to cancel its registration and forgo the benefits of the Act, it should not be hound by the restrictions upon registered unions.

There is unfortunately only the host reason to lielieve that the .report is right in- saying that many unioiiE have no real regard for the

obligations': which they incur when they receive the benefits provided by tho Act. The action o£ the slaughtermen _ referred to in the report makes it impossible to believe that the Arbitration Act is in any degree less liable to bo defied by militant Labour' than it was at the time of the Blackball strike. At least a proportion of the unions are as little inclined as ever to regard themselves as having, signed away the right to declare war when they came under l.he operation of tho Act. Although the Act has been in operation for over fifteen years, and although the Government and ils friends have done their utmost to encourage the growth of a new conception of industry, tho instinct of the worker is unchanged. .If they were honest with themselves, the friends of the Act would admit that the hopes of its founders and custodians have not been fulfilled. The "peace" that has been pointed to as a result of the Act has never been a real peace. And even that delusive asset does not stand to the credit of the Act. ,In time, \vc are convinced, the unsoundness of the principle of permanently coercing industry will be so generally recognised that the Act will bo replaced by something on the Canadian model. In the meantime it is necessary to keep tho Act under criticism, and to prevent the development o£ any further injustices or the establishment of any more vicious principles. We are therefore glad to notice that the Employers' Association is keeping in mind Mn.. Millar's virtual threat to extend the encroachments of Parliament upon the domain of the Arbitration Court. The prevention of this encroachment is a task to carry out which sensible men of all parties ought to combine.