THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1913. INDUSTRIAL ARBITRATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 7 March 1913, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1913. INDUSTRIAL ARBITRATION.

The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, so far as New Zealand is concerned, has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. It lias failed to achieve the purpose for which it was originally designed, i.e., to secure the settlement of industrial disputes by appeal to a judicial tribunal. The Legislature is faced with the necessity of repairing the Act, or expunging it from the Statute Book. As we stated in a previous issue, the country cannot stand both arbitration and freedom of contract. One section of the workers cannot be permitted to enforce their claim by strike methods while another is bound by the provisions of the Arbitration Act. If the Act is to be retained, it must be made to apply to the whole of the industrial classes, and not to individual sections. Either that, or freedom of contract, as it existed prior to tile coming into operation of the Arbitration Act, must bo universally restored. In- some quarters it is urged that the establishment of Wages Boards, on which experts only would occupy sea ts, would have the effect of restoring the industrial equilibrium.. The- experience of these Boards in Australia has not, however, been such as to encourage the belief that they would bo more effective than the Arbitration a>"'< i ciliation Act of this Dominion. On the contrary, there is reason to think that they would result in confusion being the worse confounded. In the last number of Dalgety's Review there is a thoughtful article dealing ■with the operation of the Industrial Arbitration Act which was placed upon, the Commonwealth Statute Book last year. The writer of the article states that the main trouble with all conciliation and arbitration enactments is that they certainly do not conciliate and they not infrequently fail to arbitrate' Of the making of Boards, as was formerly said of books, there is now no end. "Those Boards take voluminous evidence from the respective associations of employers and employees and make their awards, and thereafter, with much more promptitude than the awards are issued, amendments are sought or appeals are listed, or exemptions are applied for, or applications fco vary the constitutions of the Boards axe lodged, until of the original matters! upon which the Boardis haro ad*

judicated, or of the finding of those Boards thereon, there is often rothing left, or at beat mereiy a moat pitiiui semblance. This, of course, is not the invariable .rule; but tho exceptions to it are so infrequent a-5 to f>e almost negligible. And the expense and delay of these hearings, and ro hearings, and applications, and appeals, is very great indeed, as jnay well l>e imagined; while tho fact that there is practically no linality to them is a great deterrent to the Act being properly useful. But the main trouble —and the one that most potently results in the stultification of the Act —seems to be that instead of tho members of the respective Boards meeting in a spirit of conciliation, the very opposite is the case. Between the representatives of tho employers on the one hand' and thoso of the employees on the other there is almost invariably exhibited from the inception of the hearing a spirit of animosity—or, at the host, of armed neutrality—which is greatly to bo deplored. Each side seems to be imbued with tho idea that the other should be treated with only, "at arm's length," and that if any other course be adopted undue advantage will bo taken of it by the other party. The effects of such an inharmonious policy, after some time, can be easily imagined. It need hardly be argued that this policy is the very antithesis of that which should be in evidence and which the Act was intended to foster. But such is tho not infrequent effect of the most honest endeavour to interfere in the workings of industrial questions. Legislative attempts of this nature are generally made in good faith,, but the results seldom justify the means; and such, unfortunately, would seem to be the case with the Industrial Arbitration Act" of 1912. It may be that with fuller opportunities and longer experience the benefits of tho Act will appear. Such a consummation —while it is difficult to conceive of it as a probability —is a possibility devoutly to be wished.