TOO MUCH DETAIL

Evening Star, Issue 22446, 17 September 1936, Page 2

TOO MUCH DETAIL

ARBITRATION JUDGE’S COMPLAINT MORE HELP FROM CONCILIATION COUNCILS EXPECTED [Ter United Press Association.! AUCKLAND, September 16. Submission to the Arbitration Court of technical questions in award proceedings which could have been more properly decided in the Conciliation Council was commented upon by the president of the court, Mr Justice Page, when the hearing of an application for a new award by the Auckland Electrical Workers’ Union was continued. Mr W. E. Anderson appeared for the employers and Mr K. B. Simpson for the union. “ We thought it right that the court •should make some reference to the form in which the recommendations of the Conciliation Council reached it,” stated the president, when announcing that

the court’s‘decision would be reserved. The court expected that matters such as wages, hours of work, overtime payments, and holidays were matters which they would be normally called upon to decide, but where there were intricate technical questions involved they wore primarily matters for the Conciliation Council. “ For instance, the court spent the best part of the day on the interpretation of a clause trying to find out what branches of industry were meant to be covered by the award,” continued the president. “ Similarly in regard to the manufacture of electrical equipment the court has been mked to build up a set of special conditions, none of which had been even discussed in the council. These technical questions are obviously matters which should bo dealt with in the council, where the members are all experts and infinitely better equipped to decide the question, or at any rate to state in clear language the issue on which they are unable to agree. There seenis to have been no real attempt made in the Conciliation Council to reach common ground on these technical questions. The court is entitled to more help on such technical matters and cannot function unless it receives such help. Wo find it extremely difficult to make an adequate and completely satisfactory award unless we receive that assistance.”