Labour Opposes Arbitration Bill

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 184, 25 October 1927, Page 1

Labour Opposes Arbitration Bill

MARSHALLING FORCES “END OF INDUSTRIAL PEACE” Organised Labour is marshalling the forces of opposition to proposed amendments of the Arbitration Act. The Auckland District Council of the Alliance of Labour has set up a committee to examijie them with a view to the general meeting of trade unionists to be held in the Trades Hall tomorrow evening. Following steps will be a Dominion conference at Wellington and evidence given before the Labour Bills Committee. “The amendments meet with no favour at all," said Mr. G. C. Stove, secretary of the Auckland District Council this morning. “The Alliance will use every possible means in its power to prevent them from becoming Saw. The Arbitration Act has never been what it might have been, but if the amendments become law it will bring an end to industrial peace. The system has been weakened by successive amendments beginning with the Labour Disputes Investigation Act, 1913. The amendments will shackle industrial organisations, limit their activities and kill their effectiveness." “I have a copy of the amendments now and if they were passed as they stand, in my opinion, they would mean the end of collective bargaining. “The piecework clause by allowing agreement between the employer and any of his employees individually is not organised piecework, but individual piecework, and would set each individual worker against each other individual worker in the same industry. It would reintroduce sweating in its most vicious form. “Though the amendments provide that in no case may less than the equivalent of the time rate be paid, in practice it would soon be found that the award rate would come to be based on the piecework rate and not the piecework rate on the time rate. “SHEER EYE-WASH” Asked this morning as to the position of the freezing workers, Mr. W. E. Sill, secretary of the Slaughtermen’s Union, put his ideas bluntly. “The position as I see it is that there is no danger of the freezing workers being excluded from the act as we could make a very decent fight without it, It won’t affect us directly." “I am in favour of a union appointing its own assessors on the court. It is ridiculous to call them arbitrators, for how can a partisan be an arbitrator? The restrictions imposed in the amendments outbalance the value of the appointment. The six months’ protection is sheer eyewash and not worth the paper it is written on. I say from experience that any worker depending on an industry could not take the position. He is not in a position to bargain for himself let alone for other workers.”