CRITICAL SECRETARY
ARBITRATION COURT TAKEN TO TASK an injustice to workers ALLEGED Dominion Special. Dunedin, December 4. Strong condemnation of the Arbitration Court’s activities, and in particular of the Court’s attitude in the recent application for a new award of the Otago Metal Workers’ Assistants’ Union was expressed bv the secretary (Mr. J. Robinson) of tfiat body to-day. “In the first place,” said Mr. Robinson “the Court bad a very unsatisfactory method of dealing with the whole matter After the case was heard the Court took five weeks to give judgment, and in addition to there being so great a delay it dated the award forward instead of making it retrospective from the expirv of the old award.” He explained that the Arbitration Act laid it down that an award covering a district remained in force until superseded by another, and also allowed a union to apply for a new award two months before the expiry of the existing award If an agreement were reached or an award given bv the Court before the expiry of the existing award, it could not come into operation before the old one expired The case of the metal workers’ assistants w’as heard by the Conciliation Council on October 6. and had an agreement been arrived at it could not have taken effect until the old award expired on October 24. The union took steps to have a new award brought into operation at the time the old award expired, and the Court heard the case on October 28 Then, after leaving Dunedin, it nursed the matter, and when it filed the award it dated it to come into operation on December G instead of October 25. When the old award came into operation it provided a minimum rate of Is 9|d. an hour, a balfpennv ahaead of the basic rate for general labourers. After the award had been in operation eleven months the Arbitration Court granted another pennv an hour on the basic rate for general labourers, which brought the basic rate tip to Is. 10d., a halfpenny ahead of the rate for meta! workers assistants. This means that for the last thirteen months the members of the Metal Workers’ Assistants’ Union have been working at Id. an hour less than their status should give them, said Mr. Robinson, and he added that the Court was allowing this injustice to encroach for six weeks into, the period of the new award. A very minute case was submitted to the Court on behalf of the workers, but the Court according to Mr. Robinson’s version of the matter took no notice whatever of the arguments or of the evidence submitted, though the union secretary maintains that these were not shaken by the employers’ representatives. A hurried and unsatisfactory agreement had been entered into between the Canterbury Metal Workers’ Assistants’ Union and the Canterbury employers, and the Court evidently made the. Canterbury agreement the basis on which to work for the whole of the Dominion. The Court was simply forcing this award on the Otago workers, who had already resisted the terms of the agreement in the Conciliation Council,” said Mr. Robinson. “The whole affair shows that it is useless taking a case to the Court if an agreement has been entered into in any part of the Dominion covering that industry,” concluded Mr. Robinson, “because the Court seems to decide upon what someone has agreed on rather than on the evidence before it. It would be just as. satisfactory n the Court staved in Wellington and the various unions wired saying that their awards had expired and that they desired new awards.”
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Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 61, 6 December 1926, Page 8
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607CRITICAL SECRETARY Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 61, 6 December 1926, Page 8
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