UNIONS AND THE ARBITRATION ACT.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1655, 23 January 1913, Page 4

UNIONS AND THE ARBITRATION ACT.

' Practically the whole of yesterday's sitting of the Labour Conference was taken up' with a discussion upon that portion of the Arbitration Act relating to the'cancelling of a, union's registration. ■ There wis a great deal of looso talk, of course, and, equally, of course, no little use of the word "scab," but on the whole the' conference did address itself pretty closely to aquestion very proper for consideration by Labour delegates. The theory of the Act certainly implies that all unions ought to bo registered under it, and that cancellation should' be denied to active unions; but the theory of the Act is not our theory, arid is in our view a wholly unsound one. 7 It never was logical:' the implications of its principle are such that even the stoutest friends of the mcasuro . dare not be logical and face. them. If unions which have grown up under tho Act are to be allowed (as thoy are allowed) to cancel their registration, thdn the Act, which is obr viously partial and discriminative if it is not general and /universal (which it professes to be) ought to be ; abandoned; Tho opinion of the conference was strongly, and- apparently unanimously, in favour of making cancellation as easy as possible and re-registration as nearly impossible as can be devised. We\ may leave Mr. Tregear, and the other upholders of the' Act who defend the Federation and its conference, to reconcile their belief in arbitration with,, their anxiety to make the Act inoperative over as wide an area of the industrial world as possible. For the general public the point of most importance to bo noticed is the . fact that the conference seeks, not merely to extend the facilities for cancellation, but to prevent the ,rcgistration of a new union in tho. district affected. , In short, its resolutions demand the statutory granting of that tyrannical power. over tho rightsof working men which the Waihi strike was; designed to enforce against the ongine-drivers. Membors of Parliament are to be threatened with the disfavour of Mr. Sem?le and Mr. Treoear and.'Mß. Rioa, and all the rest of them unless they will support the Federation's demands. No doubt there are some weak-kneed members of Parliament who, in their anxiety to capture any vote that is going, will assist ' the Federation in, what amounts to its design to prevent the registration of any new union in any district in which the Federationists have.secured and then abandoned registration. But so long as the Act remains on the Statute-Book, nothing should be allowed to prevent any body of Workmen from registering under the Act if they wish to. Of course, if the Act is repealed altogether, the possibility of tyranny such as' the Waihi Miners' Union sought to exercise might disappear. Common justice obviously requires—and it greatly astonishes us that professed "arbitrationists" like Mn. Tregear should not admit—that the only thing that should make registration impossible is the non-existence of the Act.

A word appears to be required unon tho ballot problem in questions nf • cancellation and arbitration. Unless the official reporters have

bungled their work, there seemed to Ijc some very contradictory arguments employed by speakers on the same side. We need not attend to these; but it may be suggested that the conference might have said something, or passed some resolution, which would have indicated an anxiety to be fair and above board in managing the cancellations and so on. During tho Waihi strike many of the members of the Federation made it plain to everybody that when it suits them they will reiterate gross and notorious untruths. They made for the Federation a reputation for anything but candour , or honest dealing; and if the Federation could get the law amended to suit its wishes, it would not be very particular about the methods its unions would adopt, in sowing the industrial districts with salt. If the matter ever comes to he considered seriously, attention will have to be given to a point in connection with secret ballots, which was made in a letter to the London Times of December 9 by Mr. W. V. Osborne. "It is common knowledge," he, wrote, "that trade union ballots have been subjected to gross and widespread abuse in the past; their own documents can.bo produced as evidence. This does not necessarily mean that these bodies are more corrupt, than others. Members of Parliament are not less honest than other men, hut they arc not allowed to act as their own returning pincers. ... It is little, good .providing for a secret ballot if there is to be a secret counting of the.votes by political partisans, who may be personally interested in obtaining a certain result."- ■; . ■ ;