ARBITRATION ACT

Hokitika Guardian, 30 May 1927, Page 4

ARBITRATION ACT

ECONOMIC PROFESSOR'S PROPOSALS. "WELLINGTON, May 27. Professor J. Murphy. Professor of Economics at Victoria University College, after a searching criticism of the Arbitration Court in his address to the Royal Agricultural Society, when he said that the Court should be abolished, put forward the following suggestions

(a) That the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, 1925, he repealed. (b) That, subject to the provisions for ballot, notification, etc., contained in the Labour Disputes Investigation Act, 1913. which should be retained, the right to collective bargaining he restored to the parties, including the right to strike. (c) That the present Conciliation machinery on a voluntary basis he enacted its part of the Labour Department Act, and placed at the disposal of such parties as care voluntarily to use it. It has proved valuable, and there is a tradition attaching to it that makes it desirable that it should be retained.

(d) That a minimum wage be fixed under section 20 of the Board of Trade Act, 1919. Under this section there is ample power to fix wages. It should ho done in the first instance by a commission consisting of the present Judge of the Court of Arbitration, the Government Statistician, and some other person, preferably an economist, after pijblic inquiry and the hearing of such evidence as the commission thought fit. Thereafter it should bo varied only at rare intervals to retain it at the same real level, and to allow for variations in the price-level, and it should not be immediately responsive

to changing prices, nor should it be altered unless the index on which it is based moved a considerable number of points. (e) The other functions of the Court, hiicli as workers’ compensatimi, appre:it icesbip (ontracts, and closing of shops should be transferred to other courts, the first to the Supreme Court, the others to the Magistrate's Court.