DOMINION PRESS.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 February 1922, Page 5

DOMINION PRESS.

MEETING OF PROPRIETORS. THE INDUSTRIAL SITUATION. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. The annual meeting of the New Zealand Newspaper Proprietors’ Association was held this morning. The report and balance-sheet were adopted. Mr. Charles' Earle (chairman) said the fuutre outlook for newsprint supplies was regarded as uncertain, prices still being unsteady, while business was depressed. Referring to the industrial situation, Mr. Earle remarked on the conference of representatives of printing trade employees held in Christchurch and said it was not likely the Arbitration Court would be influenced by the transparent propaganda o£ that conference, but they could not allow it to pass unchallenged. It might be thought that under existing conditions the talk of increased wages would be abandoned, as too foolish for sensible men to waste time over and that trade unions would centre their attention on the more pressing problem of devising means to ensure contiiius of employment for their members.

Mr. Earle said that apparently regardless of changed conditions unions were following along the old lines and concentrating their energies on an endeavor to bolster up the present abnormally high rate of wages. Their latest procedure could only be regarded as a blatant attempt to bluff the Arbitration Court into a continuance of the existing awards by demanding more than the awards now gave them; Mr. Justice Frazer’s recent pronouncement, however, conveyed the impression that this sort of * humbug carried little weight and it was a reflection on the Court that such claims should be advanced in face of a fall in the cost of living and the prevailing depression in the newspaper business and trade and industry generally. Mr. Earle was re-elected president.