WELLINGTON NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 9 November 1927, Page 1

WELLINGTON NEWS

COMPULSORY ARBITRATION

(Special to “ Guardian ”.)

WELLINGTON. Nov. 7. It is no exaggeration to say that every economist in New Zealand is opposed to unr present- system o! compulsory arbitration. Notwithstanding that it has been in iorce in New Zealand for over thirty years it has not been copied hy any other nation or country except Australia. The British workers will not have it, nor yet will the American ; and the fart that the Government has found it necessary to amend the Act is a candid admission that the Act r.o longer fulfils its purpose il it Ins ever done so. It was initiated to secure industrial peace and in that it has failed signally. A 1 r A. H. 'locker Professor of E<anomies at Canterbury College in a critical .analysis of the operations of the Act declares tent ‘■its direct and indirect effects on industry. and industrial organisation, and its present part in promoting, rather than removing industrial difficulties must condemn the system as both futile and harmful.” Professor Tocker holds that the principle ol State compulsion and standardised \v;i£o rates and conditions are injurions and thoroughly objectionable and adds :-- '‘They are an integral part of our system, and it is the system which is at fault. Compulsory arbitration should, therefore, bo not revised. but abolished.” Here we have the considered judgment of a trained economist, who has no ulterior motive. but is concerned only in the examination of tacts. Professor locket gives ample reasons for his decision. Compulsory arbitration was an experiment designed mainly to set are industrial popce, and it has failed recently in an increasing degree, to achieve that end. It is pointed out that, from 1921 to 1925 about 6 per cent of the wage earner's of the Dominion accounted for 90 per cent of the industrial stoppages. . These G pei* cent are l lit 1 more militimt unionists engaged in shipping and waterside working, mining, and tire* freezing industries. Sonic of these do not use the Court at all; others use it or free themselves from it at their convenience. The remaining 94 per cent of wage earners were responsible tor only 10 per cent of the stoppages of work. The Court, therefore, fails to operate in that- part of industry where its services are most needed to secure industrial peace it operates effectively only where its services are but little required for this end,

The development of the Court has been on wrong lines. It lias become a tribunal for the State regulation of wages and labour conditions. H has standardised and stereotyped wage rates, mainly upon a fallacious basis, that of the cost of living, and haimposed on industry a system ol minute and rigid regulation which has greatly increased production costs and has seriously retarded the development of hotter organisation and methods of production Professor Clay, of Manchester, who is one of the world's gredest authorities on Labour, lias laid it down that “Governments should do all in their power to promote collective bargaining, conciliation and arbitration. hut should never, on any account, fix a wage rate.” Arbitration as used bv Professor Clay, means the method of securing rc'd agreement between tbe disputants through t.ho agency of a mediator, not the imposition of a legally binding award by an authority external to the dispute. Professor Toeker contends that the real burden of our larbitration system lulls ultimately on the consumers and on the unsheltered primary industries, i “In New Zealand,” says the Professor .“trade unionists, regarding the Court ns the sole arbiter of wages, have become obsessed with the idea of providing work .and wages, regardless of cost, and use the Court for this end.” The labour leaders and agitators cannot realise, or refuse t > jXfise. that lie employer can paly a man more than the value added to the total product by that, man’s labour. Compulsory arbitration fails to recognise that the price paid for labour is the product ol an infinite number of far reaching ‘and variable lactors. most of which are beyond the scope of the Court. The amending legislation of the Government is hotly opposed mainly by those who have acquired what may lie termed vested interests, hut the full weight of evidence is entirely opposed to compulsory arbitration wage fixing and Strife regulation of the minute details of industry.