FIXATION OF WAGES

Hokitika Guardian, 27 November 1928, Page 7

FIXATION OF WAGES

A CAUSE OF UNEMPLOYMENT

AUCKLAND, Nov. 22,

Wage-fixing and the duties of the Arbitration Court were matters commented on at the annual meeting of 1-ho Auckland Provincial Employers’ Association.

•|t if; not so much the number of unemployed as the improbnliility ot a large proportion of thorn being ataonbi*(| again in the industrial occupations 110111" which they were .discharged which makes the situation so serious, •i ml leads to the questoin whether the ]>resont wage-fixing system lias not in isome industries entirely collapsed,” said the president, Mr Albert Spencer. “The employers have not been able to resist successfully, and in many cases have not attempted to resist the labour demands for increased wages, reduced hours, and other concessions.” The employers had accepted the apparently inevitable, hut had been forced to put off hands when it was found that they were not earning the wages they had demanded. The position bad been aggravated by a number of tbe unemployed having started work on their own account. Being under no restrictions, and having no wages to pay they cut the prices—in some cases below tbe pre-war level. As this position bad been brought about by labour unions the onus was cm them to find a solution.

Mr Sp'emer said that the original intention that the Arbitration Comt should be a court of appeal for disputes which could not be settled bx conciliation bad gradually, and perhaps inevitably, been lost sight of, and the court bad become practically a wage-fixing tribunal.