ARBITRATION APPEAL

Taranaki Daily News, 26 September 1940, Page 6

ARBITRATION APPEAL

By Telegraph—Press Association.

MR. W. MACHIN'S DESIRE

Wellington, Septl 24. In a speech at the opening of the Employers' Federation conference. the president, Mr. W. Machin, emphasised two matters he considered important at the present time, production, which was vital to our prosperity, and a proposal that decisions of the Arbitration Court shall in future be subject to appeal. After stating that New Zealand's great production in primary industries had been based on payment by results, ' he said he was certain .New Zealand was miseing the highest production in many, industries where wages were being paid on time rates, particularly in the present atmosphere of strictly limited working time by law. Therefore, for the duration of the war at least, he thought we should revert wherever possible to piece work and payment by results, and suspend for the time being the present rigid limita-_ tion of working hours, which he was sure was inducing in many earners, consciously or unconsciously, a limitation of effort, which was slowing up production. He quoted the Government statistician's estimate of factory production for the years ended June, 1939, and 1940, £30,500,000 in each .case, which, if it turned out to be correct, showed that production last June must be lower because prices had risen and the value was estimated at no more. If the Prime Minister's exhortation,' "Work for your lives," was to be given the meaning he intended and the meaning this grave hour demanded, it .was surely not too much to ask that serious consideration should be given to, the question of payment by results. In regard to the Arbitration Court,. he ^aid that if trade and industry were to fljpurish it must be recognised that the arbitrary apportionment of wage chargfes on industry on a -basis of assumed and anticipated volume and price return, which might or might not eventuate, must give way to a sounder and more ordered method; otherwise "industry ! might languish, because it would lose | part of its intangible, but most import- j ant, capital of enterprise and willingness 1 to adventure because of arbitrary and discouraging impositions by the power of the State. Before, therefore, the State wielded this power it should be satisfied, and all concerned should be satisfied, that judgments which might seem to be ill-founded had been impartially reviewed.