LABOUR AND THE ARBITRATION ACT.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1348, 27 January 1912, Page 4

LABOUR AND THE ARBITRATION ACT.

The recent conference between the wharf-workers and their employers and the seamen and the shipowners would seem to have ended so satisfactorily for the men that they are congratulating themselves on the cancellation of the registration of their respective unions under the Arbitration Act. It is natural, perhaps, that the representatives of the unions concerned should talk a little loudly over their success and contrast it with their previous efforts under the Arbitration Act. We have frequently pointed out the futility of the compulsory provisions of the Arbitration Act ■ where the large unions are concerned and have no sympathy with a law which provides penalties enforceable against one of the parties to an award and not the other._ But there is at least this to be said for the Arbitration Court which cannot always be said of the private conferences between employers and employees. The Arbitration Court takes; or should take, the wide view of the effect of a given award on the whole community. It has no personal interests of its own to consider and therefore if it does its duty faithfully it is concerned only with the merits of the claims and their general effect. The employers and employees sitting in private conference are, on the other hand, each directly concerned with the immediate effect on themselves. The effect on the goneral public may ally enter their minds and be advanced to support an argument or drive home a contention, but their real anxiety is arriving at an agreement in the consideration of their own personal interest. This' is a very good thing in some respects but not always so. "W' e have already seen, for instance, that the very substantial concessions made to the wharf-labourers by the shipping companies and others have not left the general public unscathed. The agreement arrived at by the parties to the dispute is going to affect more or less seriously others who had no one in attendance to watch their interests—that is to say, the general public who had no voice in the matter at all are to pay the piper. How much of the burden of the increased pay and the improved working conditions will be passed on in this way we cannot pretend to say, and we merely direct attention to the matter now in order to emphasise the very obvious fact that the general public must receive due consideration in these matters if any lasting good is to come from the agreements entered into. If the cost of living is driven up to correspond with the increased wages gained, what benefit is it to the workers or anyone else 2