TERMS OF AWARDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1939, Page 9

TERMS OF AWARDS

SHORTENING IN RECENT YEARS. COMMENT BY COMMISSIONER. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Comment on the general reluctance of parties to industrial disputes to come to agreement on awards for longer periods than 12 months was made by Mr M. J. Reardon, Conciliation Commissioner, when the Dominion dispute in the printing and related trades was being heard before him yesterday. “I have been more than three years in this position.” Mr Reardon said, “and 1 don’t think I have had five cases where the- parties have agreed to an award for a longer term than 12 months. When I was an interested party about 15 or 20 years ago. we often agreed to a three-year term.” A workers’ assessor: "There have been changed conditions. They are fluctuating now. Years ago they vzere not.” Mr Rearden: “I think that that is what is crowding the amount of work the Court of Arbitration has had to face. It is true there have been other circumstances, sUch as illness and so forth, which were unavoidable. It is clear to me that the Court has made up its mind to a certain course of action, and I’ think you are wasting your energies going to the Court when you know you will get what the Court has said you will get.” Mr Reardon added that when the Court was prepared to make an alteration in wages, it would take a typical case and allow the parties to bring evidence on the question. The agent for the workers, Mr K. Baxter, said the council was not considering the question of increases in general. It- was considering only those which came under the Court’s pronouncement. "With all due respect to you as men, and you are entitled to that,” Mr Baxter said to the employers' assessors, “some of your complexes do not correspond with ours from the workers’ angle.”