“NED KELLYING”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 188, 29 October 1927, Page 13

“NED KELLYING”

LABOUR RESISTS ARBITRATION BILL A STRONG DEPUTATION (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, To-day. “The Government is ‘Ned Kellying’ the industrial movement of New Zealand. It is not fair, and it is not honest. The Bill causes every possibility of industrial strife and discontent, and will be definitely detrimental to the economic v/elfare of the Dominion.” In these words, Mr. J. Roberts, secretary of the New Zealand Alliance of Labour and Waterside Workers’ Federation, summed up the objections of the labour organisations to the proposed amendments to the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, as the chief spokesman for a large deputation which waited upon the Hon. G. J. Anderson, Minister of Labour, and the Right Hon. J. G. Coates, Prime Minister, this morning.

Air. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, who introduced the deputation, asserted that the amendments would leave no road to redress except strikes on one hand and lpck-outs on the other, and strife must arise out of it.

Air. Roberts said that a Labour conference yesterday, representing 90,000 workers, had carefully considered the Bill. There was not a single redeeming feature in it, and they asked that it be withdrawn altogether. It would strangle trade unionism, foster sweating and create industrial disputes. The provision for piece-work would be fought tooth and nail by the trades union movement in New Zealand, and the proposals in the Bill would not help in any way to establish the piece-work system in the Dominion.

The provision for arbitrators would be inoperative, and, under the proposals it would be possible to have a judge with a lunatic on one hand, representing the workers, and a gaol-bird on the other, representing the employers. . “This is a complete change of front from what was in your minds about 18 months ago, when I received from almost every trade union in New Zea-

land demands that the court be altered or abolished,” said Mr. Anderson. “The Bill is now out of the hand 3 of the Government, and is before a Parliamentary committee, and we will be pleased to have evidence from you. The argument that the Bill will destroy trade unionism is all fudge. I am too old a hand to believe that. Further, there is not any attempt being made to do so.”