COMPULSORY ARBITRATION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPEC LATOR."]
Stn,—Dnring a four months' tour through New Zealand last year, when I visited all the chief towns and mining districts, I made special inquiries into the working of their Conciliation and Arbitration Act. Most employers of labour, who are immediately affected by it, dislike it strongly; some con- sidered that its satisfactory working depended almost entirely on the Judge of the Supreme Court who acts as President of the Arbitration Court; and educated opinion generally seemed to regard it as an experiment which only time could test. Previously to August last, when I left New Zealand, the great majority of cases under it had been brought by the workmen, and in all of them with one or two exceptions the decisions of the Conciliation Board had not been accepted, but they had been carried further, to the Arbitration Court. The effect of the Act, therefore, is to leave the fixing of wages and the decision of questions about holidays, overtime, the engagement of apprentices, the employment of Union and non-Union men, and so on, to one man, who has no technical acquaintance with the points at issue. As there are no laws to guide him, he can only strike a balance between the contending parties, and naturally he will lean towards one side or the other, according to his personal predilections. The Act provides labour leaders with an additional handle which they may use to harass employers, and the more they ask under it the more they are likely to get. Having bad some personal experience of strikes in England, I was favourably predisposed towards this Act ; but a closer acquaintance with it leaves me strongly of opinion that the line we are taking here at home, of Concilia- tion Boards with voluntary arbitration, is a safer and wiser coarse to pursue in the long-run. Compulsion and concilia- tion are contradictory principles: Admit legal compulsion, and you drive out the much more beneficial principle of mutual conciliation. Compulsory arbitration under the New Zealand Act means in its ultimate issue that whenever Labour and Capital cannot agree, an outsider must decide bow profits are to be divided, and this can hardly fail to check enterprise and to drive away capital.—I am, Sir, &c.,
HARRISON F. HIILMAN.,
Boss ills, Richmond Hill Avenue, Clifton, Bristol.
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