ARBITRATION COURT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1480, 14 June 1905, Page 2

ARBITRATION COURT.

(Peri-Press Association.)' Christchurch, last night.

At the Arbitration Court to-day it was announced that agreements 1 had been arrived at between the parties in dispates between the Slaughterer Assistants’ Union and the South Canterbury jTaUow and Manure, and the General Labourers’ Union and the Christchurch and Canterbury Meat Companies. The Court congratulated the parties on arriving at an amioable understanding. The agreement' in both cases is to be embodied in the - awards of the Courts. ®ln a case in which an employee sought to recover the difference between the minimum wage and that which he received the President referred to the question whether the Court should be made a debt collecting machine, and said that unless some actual difficulty could! be suggested for preventing cases like the one before the Coart being dealt with in the Magistrate’s Court it was manifestly’ unfair that tho Arbitration Court should have its time taken up in investigating matters that could bo settled by a Magistrate. The Arbitration Act had not destroyed the law of contract and hiring, and a claim for wages might be made in the Magistrate’s Court. The effect of the Act was merely to restrain / parsons from making contracts which did not come within the terms of an award.