So called Conciliation.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 182, 9 August 1901, Page 4

So called Conciliation.

(To llic Editor of the Times.)

Siu, —I was much interested in reading the comments in the Turns on the subject of the overwrought arbitration-conciliation business. The time was when in my humble way I was a strong advocate of sonic spell legislation,- but it is time the peg were put in somewhere, for the conciliation horse is being ridden to death. In a Canterbury paper to hand by the last mail there is a report of an interview which we hope you will publish through the Times. It is as follows : Mr John MacGregor, an ex-legislator, on being interviewed, was asked to give his views on the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, and in reply said: —“ There was hardly an instance of an Act which had been passed for one purpose—a beneficent one—that was net perverted to a totally different and most mischievous purpose. In supporting the measure in the Legislative Council, I realised tee disastrous effects of the maritime strike of 1890, and considered it necessary to endeavour to devise some means of putting an end to the industrial warfare. In common with the Hon. W. IJ.1 J . Beeves, the author of the measure, I hoped and believed that the passing of the Act would lead to a settlement of the disputes between employers and employed by means of conciliation; and that the existence of compulsory provisions 1 in the background ’ (to use the Hon. Mr Reeves’s phrase) would have promoted the main object of the Bill—viz., conciliation. But in this respect the Act has been almost a failure. It has been used systematically bytrades unionists, and unions have been created for the express purpose of getting up disputes. The Unions have generally shown that they regard Conciliation Boards as simply a stepping stone to the Arbitration Court. In short, they have done their best to transform all the proceedings under the Act into legal proceedings, and to substitute coercion for conciliation. Cases that have been settled without going to the Arbitration Court will, I think, be found t i be mainly coses in which a rise of wages made little difference to the employers, as they thought they could pass it o:r to the public ; in fact, in such cases there is what looks like a conspiracy between the unionists and the employers to 1 get at ’ the public. It seems to me that the Conciliation Boards fail in their .duty when they allow themselves to be made parties to anything haying tire appearance of such an arrangement, but there’-is a limit to this sort of thing, and the employers and unionists alike are beginning to find that out, and the public are now beginning to enquire where the matter is to end. The compulsory arbitration clauses of the Act were never intended by the author to be invoked at all, except when a strike or a lock-out had taken place, or was threatened, or was likely to take place. I feel.certain that the Hon. Mr lieeves must be very much surprised, and probably disappointed, at the manner in which the Act has been perverted to improper uses. He had not the least idea of the possibility of the Act being used and unions created for the express purpose of getting up disputes with the object of carrying them to the Arbitration Court. I can give one indication of the Hon. Mr Eeeves’s feeling, and that is the fact that in the Legislative Council, about two years ago, the Hon. Mr Pinkerton read a letter from him in which he expressed the hope that the unionists would not ride the Act too hard. Since then the Act has been ridden harder than ever, as we all know. lam convinced that a short period of depression will be sufficient to cp r en the eyes of most people as to the folly and fatuity of using the Act as the unionists arc using it now. I consider the only part of any value in Judge Backhouse's report is that in which he says it is impossible to judge of the working of the system until it has been tested by bad times. The other parts of his report, as cabled, show that he looked upon the system as what it was intended to be, and not wbat it was. I consider the giving of preference is mainly responsible for the multiplication of disputes, and I believe it will be the ruin of unionism, and that it will bring the Act into discredit."

—lf you publish the foregoing further comment on my part will bo unnecessary. —I am, etc., Faidiek.