LABOUR LEGISLATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXIII, Issue 174, 6 August 1901, Page 3

LABOUR LEGISLATION.

UNIONIST SUGGESTIONS AND DEMANDS. THE PREMIER BBEAKS OUT. PES PRESS ASSOCIATION. Wellington, August 5. A deputation representing several ouions waited on tbe Premier to-night with a number of proposals which, if put into effect, would, they considered, help to better the working of labour legislation. The deputation suggested that disputes should be heard in central places only. Association is of unionists should be organised in each district, and delegates appointed for centres and sub-districts to repres'nt unionists before the Board, and that representatives of such associations should be given free parse* on the railways. The Premier, in his reply, made some gefteral remarks n to the working of the system new in vogue. 'He had, he said, good reason for recently saying that if things went on as they were doing there would be a breakdown. He had received a telegram from Auckland stating that four hundred people had been cited in one case there. * That was riding the thing to death, and was unnecessary. Again the same evidence was repeated in cases ad nauseam, and tbe business of the bo«rds clogged by unnecessary repetitions, which seriously affected employers and employed. The result was that both sides were getting sick ®f it all. He was very sorry these things were happening, because they had a tendency to injure wLat he considered a beneficent legislation. If tbe Arbitration Court did not get its woik squared up they would have to appoint an additional judge. That was the plain English of tbe present position. Again, emplnyers did not want to be everlastingly in a turmoil. There was a difficulty in making awards for the whole of the district?, as tbe conditions of. life varied greatly in places like Wellington and New Plymouth, for instance. Yet he wouli consider tbe point. He could not countenance the proposal to give unionist delegates free railway passes, and thought unionists would have to act with great circumspection or they would have public opinion against them.