LIVING STANDARDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 451, 5 September 1928, Page 16

LIVING STANDARDS

ARBITRATION AGAIN THRASHED OUT

NO ATTACK ON WAGE RATES (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. The well-worn subject of'industrial arbitration formed the basis for another debate this evening in the House of Representatives, when the Prime Minister presented his Industrial Conciliation and Amendment Bill for the second reading. The Bill embodies no new principle, it is simply the extension for another year of the provisions of last year’s enactment, by which it was determined that no award covering rural industries should be made without the prior consent of both parties.

Mr. Coates, In Introducing the Bill was subject to a persistent fire of interjections from the opposite benches, and was charged with countenancing attempts to lower the standard of living. The case of the Manawatu flaxworkers, who recently agreed to resume work at reduced wages, was raised, Mr. Coates stating that it was either reduced wages or a complete breakdown of the industry, while the markets were in their present state. Anyone who said that he was a party to a reduction to the living wage was guilty of distinct misrepresentation. The round-table agreement, rather than the Arbitration Court, was becoming the favoured way of settling industrial disputes. Mr. H. E. Holland disagreed with the principle that the industry that could not pay its workers a fair living wage should be maintained at all costs, and defied any member to show how a married man could keep a family on 13s 6d a day, which was the new rate for the Manawatu flaxworkers. Mr. J. McCombs said that there had not for a quarter of a century been any party that had made more persistent efforts than the present Government to force down the standard of living. Mr. W. A. Veitch saw a very real danger that arbitration would soon be so crippled by legislation that it might as well be discarded. He firmly believed in arbitration. “I know perfectly well that the Leader of the Labour Party is no friend of the Arbitration Court,” continued Mr. Veitch after a brush with Mr. Holland in the course of which he said Mr. Holland, though the severest critic in the House, was himself most sensitive under criticism. Mr. Coates said that Labour men, for electioneering purposes, were trying to say that he had deliberately forced down wages, which was untrue. The Bill passed the second reading after a rambling two hours’ debate.