The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1907

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2013, 23 February 1907, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1907

While a case is sub judice it is not permissible to refer to it by way of comment in a newspaper oxcept under pain of such punish meat as the Court may award, and we havo no desire to transgress that very necessary rule; but any reference to tho relations now existing between omployer and employed in tho slaughtering business is now carried beyond tho jurisdiction of a Court by recent developments at Pareora and Gisborne. In the former place a strike has occurred because of a refusal of the slaughtermen to resume work until their demands havo been granted, and in Gisborne a demand for increased pay has been made, and further negotiations arc ponding. In each case both employers and employed are working under an award of thr Arbitration Court, and those awards havo a stated time to run and have the force of law until tho date of their expiry. In that respect they stand in the same category as all other legal agreements and ought to he observed; but the slaughtermen at Pareora have evidently regarded their award as a thing breakable at the will of one of the parties to the agreement, and have broken it accordingly. What they would have said if the employers had been the aggressors it is not difficult to imagine, and had the employers done so they would have deserved little sympathy, nor would they get it either. If therefore it would he unfair for one party to break through the agreement it is surely equally unfair for the other party to break through also, and for that reason, which, it must he admitted, is a tangible one, we hope the local slaughtermen will permit wiser councils to prevail, and that they will not follow in the footsteps of their southern friends. It is, of course, competent for them to approach their employers, and to negotiate for a betterment of their contract; but to take the law into their own hands and cease to fulfil their part of a contract honorably entered into on "both sides would be a grave mistake.- We have never approved of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act as a whole, and in its administration there havo been many blots; but whether it is right or wrong an agreement properly entered into under its provisions should be observed by both sides until it expires, for if that is not to be so all such agreements are useless-. Once admit the right of one party to an award to break through it at a day’s or a week’s notice, and the other party must be accorded the same rights, and if that is to be tlie case it is waste of time entering into such agreements. But what we wish to emphasise is that agreements between employer and employed, even though they are merely verbal and not reduced to legal written form, should be loyally observed until their termination, for if it is to be otherwise it is better to have no agreements or awards at all- Without entering into tho merits or demerits of the men’s claims for higher pay, it may be said that there is a community of interest between employer and employed, for loss of business usually means loss of employment which must in the nature of things press heavily upon workmen, and, on tho other hand, labor is entitled to some

advantage for increased results from, tho products of labor, and it ought to bo the business of tlio Arbitration Courts to hit tlio medium between those two extremes ,aml to fix tlic rntos of wages accordingly, and once that medium is ostabishod it ought to bo adhered to until revised and altered if nocossary. But to sot up tlio principle that rates of pay should bo subject to sudden fluctuations at tlio whim of either party is an exceedingly dangerous thing both for tho employer and lor tlio workmen thomsolvos, and a thing that neither in their own interests ought to encourage. As wo have said, there can ho no reasonable objection to fair negotiation at the initiative of either party; but that negotiation ought, as a matter of abstract principle, never to iuclildo any notion of a .sudden termination of un agreement before its lawful expiry unless it is done by mutual consent. If it is otherwise, there can bo no stability in any kind of business in which labor is employed, and without stability business of any kind is hilt a poor thing indeed. Lot us illustrate what instability in business would mean to tho workers themselves. Suppose a man desires to enter into a contract to supply tlio British Navy with frozen meat for a year, and lie makes an offer to do so at a fixed prico which is dependent largely upon award rates for labor which aro lixed for a period ; but lie finds that lie is suddenly called upon to pay a higher rate which converts his otherwise payable contract into a nonpayable ono, ho will simply not renew tho contract and ceaso to employ that labor as soon as be can conveniently do so, and the business in all likelihood goes to another country where labor is cheaper. Or if a man desires io erect a factory and employ labor, lie will, if ho is wise, not run the risk of.' loss if labor cannot bo depended upon at a fair average rate and without strikes which would upset if not wholly destroy tho business which for its success depends upon regular output ns much as anything elso. Looked at from any side you will, it is essential to the success of both capital and labor that they should reciprocate in business methods and maintain tho essential stability, and that can never bo done by spasmodically upseting mutual understandings. Tlio workers have a duty to perform as well as their ordinary routine work, and so have tboir employers, and that is not to betray each other’s confidence, and to fairly and squarely carry out their obligations both legal nnd moral, one towards the other. If either party departs from that golden rule the party that does so will estrange from themselves the sympathy and assistance which otherwise they would be entitled to receive, and we have sufficient confidence in the manliness and straightforwardness of both parties to the local dispute to tiling that neither will be the aggressor of that principle in this respect, and that ns a consequence an amicable settlement will at once be arrived at.