PREFERENCE TO UNIONISTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 453, 23 March 1909, Page 3

PREFERENCE TO UNIONISTS.

MR JUSTICE SIM’S RULING

At the Wellington sitting of the Arbitration Court on Friday last further evidence was taken in the case in which W. G. Parsons was charged with a breach of the preference clause of the carpenters’ award. On the previous day Parsons had admitted employing certain workmen for special work. These new men were not unionists, but reference to the union’s employment book showed that there were at the time no competent unionists out of work. Parsons said he had examined the book the day before employing the men in question. Judge Sim said Parsons’s evidence conflicted with that given previously, which was that he bad examined the union’s books the day after employing the, men. A majority of the Court found that a breach had occurred, and Parsons was fined £ 2. Mr S. Brown, the employers’ repieseutalive, said his opinion was that no man should be convicted on the evidence of the employment book. The facts given therein were not sufficient to indicate where workmen could be found. The book should contain much fuller information, and the secretary of the Unions should assist the employers in searching 1 for competent Union men out of I employment. Further evidence was taken in the charge against Humphries Bros, of a bre ich of the preference clause of the carpenters’ award. G- Humphries said his brother, L. Humphries, at present in England, had engaged the men in question. The case was ordered to stand over till L. Humphries’ return.

His Honour said it seemed to him to come back to the same question that emplo3'ers might save themselves a great deal of trouble by declining to employ men until they had satisfied themselves that the applicants were members of the Union.

Mr Grenfell, who appeared for Humphries, said it placed an unduly heavy burden on employers to ask them to search for Unionists when competent men were waiting at their doors not only in New Zealand but from elsewhere. First-class workers did not require to be bolstered up by Unions or have their rights maintained by them, and they, therefore, declined to join Unions. His Honour asked if Grenfell thought workers would be better off without UnionsMr Grenfell said he believed they would. Workers had in the past ground for complaints perhaps, but the great body of employers treated their men fairly. His Honour said that if so, Wellington was a fortunate place. Human nature was different here from what it was in other places if employers had reached that stage of perfection. Julius Adolphus Lutz, hotelkeeper, was convicted of a breach of the Cooks’ and Waiters’ award for employing a man as a porter and not paying him a porter’s wages. The defence was that the man had been engaged not as a porter but as a rouseabout. No fine was inflicted. Dunedin, March 19.

Employers are up in arms over Mr Justice Sim’s remarks over preference to Unionists. The New Zealand Employers’ Federation have circularised all the affiliated associations asking their opinion on the matter. “ What the employers complain of,” said a prominent Dunedin employer, “ is that up to the present time neither acts nor awards of the Court have taken away from employers the right to engage the best labour obtainable, whether a man is a Unionist or a uon-Unionist, but it now appears that the employer has to take on a Unionist whether suitable or not. This strikes at the very foundation of the employer’s right, and consequently is carrying consternation throughout the Dominion.”