The Long White Cloud: "Ao Tea Roa"

by William Pember Reeves

The laws which regulate retail shops do not aim at securing what is known as early closing. A weekly half-holiday for all, employer and employed alike; a fifty-four hours' working week for women and young persons; seats for shop girls, and liberty to use them; sanitary inspection of shops. These were the objects of those who framed the acts, and these have been attained. Under a special section merchants' offices must close at 5 o'clock p.m. during two-thirds of each month. On the weekly half-holiday shops in towns must be closed at 1 o'clock, but each town chooses its own day for closing. Nearly all choose Wednesday or Thursday, so as not to interfere with the Saturday market-day of the farmers. Much feeling was stirred up by the passing of this Act, but it has since entirely died away.

Until 1894 the legal position of Trade Unionists in New Zealand was much less enviable than that of their brethren in England. The English Act of 1875 repealing the old Labour Conspiracy law and modifying the common law doctrine relating thereto, had never been enacted in New Zealand. The Intimidation law (6 George IV.) was still in force throughout Australasia; the common law doctrine relating thereto had not been in any way softened. Within the last few years Australian Trade Unionists had found the old English law unexpectedly hunted up for the purpose of putting them into gaol. Three short clauses and a schedule, passed in 1894, swept from the Statute-Book and the common law of New Zealand all laws and doctrines specially relating to conspiracy among members of Trades Unions who in future will only be amenable to such conspiracy laws as affect all citizens.

In New Zealand most domestic servants and many farm hands and gardeners are engaged through Servants' Registry Offices. A law, passed in 1895, provides for the inspection of these, and regulates the fees charged therein. Office-keepers have to be of good character; have to register and take out a license; have to keep books and records which are officially inspected. They are not allowed to keep lodging-houses or to have any interest in such houses.

To certain students the most interesting and novel of the New Zealand labour laws is that which endeavours to settle labour disputes between employers and Trade Unions by means of public arbitration instead of the old-world methods of the strike and the lock-out. Under this statute, which was passed in 1894, the Trade Unions of the Colony have been given the right to become corporate bodies able to sue and be sued. In each industrial locality a Board of Conciliation is set up, composed equally of representatives of employers and workmen, with an impartial chairman. Disputes between Trade Unions and employers—the Act deals with no others—are referred first of all to these Boards. The exclusion of disputes between individuals, or between unorganized workmen and their masters, is grounded on the belief that such disputes are apt to be neither stubborn nor mischievous enough to call for State interference; moreover, how could an award be enforced against a handful of roving workmen, a mere nebulous cluster of units? At the request of any party to an industrial dispute the District Board can call all other parties before it, and can hear, examine, and recommend. It is armed with complete powers for taking evidence and compelling attendance. Its award, however, is not enforceable at law, but is merely in the nature of friendly advice. Should all or any of the parties refuse to accept it, an appeal lies to the Central Court of Arbitration, composed of a judge of the Supreme Court sitting with two assessors representing capital and labour respectively. The trio are appointed for three years, and in default of crime or insanity can only be removed by statute. Their court may not be appealed from, and their procedure is not fettered by precedent. No disputant may employ counsel unless all agree to do so. The decisions of this Court are binding in law, and may be enforced by pains and penalties. The arbitration law has been in active operation for about three years, during which time some thirty-five Labour disputes have been successfully settled. As a rule, the decisions of the Local Conciliation Boards are not accepted. Either some of the parties refuse to concur, or some of the recommendations are objected to by all those on one side or the other. In nearly all cases the awards of the Arbitration Court have been quietly submitted to. In three minor cases proceedings have been taken for penalties. Twice these have been dismissed on technical grounds. In the third instance a small penalty was imposed. All the important Labour disputes of the last three years have been brought before the tribunals set up under the Act. The only strike which has occurred and has attracted any attention during this period was by certain unorganized bricklayers working for the government. As the Act applied to neither side an attempt was made to settle the dispute by voluntary arbitration. Some of the men, however, refused to accept the arbitrators' award, and lost their work. But of strikes by Trades Unions there have been none, and there should be none so long as the Act can be made to work.

As to the kind of questions arbitrated upon, they comprise most of the hard nuts familiar to students of the Labour problem. Among them are hours of labour, holidays, the amount of day wages, the price to be paid for piece-work, the proportion of apprentices to skilled artizans, the facilities to be allowed to Trade Union officials for interviews with members, the refusal of Unionists to work with non-Union men, and the pressure exerted by employees to induce workmen to join private benefit societies. A New Zealand employer, it may be mentioned, cannot take himself outside the Act of discharging his Union hands, or even by gradually ceasing to engage Union men, and then pleading that he has none left in his employ. A Union, whose members are at variance with certain employers in a trade, may bring all the local employees engaged in that trade into court, so that the same award may be binding on the whole trade in the district.

Most of the references have been anything but trivial affairs, either as to the numbers of workmen concerned, or the value of the industries, or importance of the points in dispute. It is wrong to suppose that the operation of the Act is confined to industries protected by high customs duties, or to workers in factories. It may be applied wherever workers are members of legally constituted bodies, set up either under the Trade Union Act, or under the Arbitration Statute itself. Unions who want to make use of it, register under it; and some eighty have already done so. Trade Unions who do not specially register may nevertheless be brought before the Arbitration Court by the employers of their members. So far the Act has met with a remarkable measure of success. The Trade Unions are enthusiastic believers in it,—rather too enthusiastic, indeed, for they have shown a tendency to make too frequent a use of it. Some of their officials, too, would do well to be more brief and businesslike in the conduct of cases. On the other hand, employers in most of the localities have made a serious mistake in refusing to elect representatives for the local Conciliation Boards, and thus forcing the Government to nominate members. This has weakened the Boards, has hindered them from having the conciliatory character they ought to have, and has led in part to the frequent appeals to the Central Court of which the employers themselves complain. The lawyers claim to have discovered that the penalty clauses of the Act are badly drafted, and some of them assert that unless these are amended, they will be able to drive a coach and six through the statute. No doubt technical amendments will be required from time to time. What is still more requisite is an understanding between the more reasonable leaders on both sides of industry, by which arrangements may be made for the more effectual and informal use of the Conciliation Boards. Meanwhile it savours of the absurd to talk and write—as certain fault-finders have done—as though every arbitration under the Act were a disturbance of industry as ruinous as a prolonged strike. Other critics have not stickled to assert that it has mischievously affected the volume of the Colony's industries, a statement which is simply untrue. It is the reviving prosperity of the Colony during the last three years which has led the Trade Unions to make so much use of the Act. In place of striking on a rising market, as they do in other countries, they have gone to arbitration. Public opinion in New Zealand has never been one-sided on the question. It has all along been prepared to give this important experiment a fair trial, and is quite ready to have incidental difficulties cured by reasonable amendment.

The Shipping and Seamen's Act, 1894, and the amending Acts of the two following years, mitigate the old-fashioned severity of punishments for refusal of duty, assaults on the high seas, and other nautical offences. The forecastle and the accommodation thereof become subject to the fiat of the Government inspector, as are factories on shore. Regular payment of wages is stipulated for, overcrowding amongst passengers is forbidden. Complete powers are given to the marine authorities to enforce not only a full equipment of life-boats and life-saving appliances, but boat-drill. Deck loading is restricted, and the Plimsoll mark insisted on. But the portion of the Act which gave rise to the intensest opposition was the proviso by which all sailing vessels are obliged to carry a certain complement of able seamen and ordinary seamen, according to their tonnage, while steamers must carry a given number of able seamen, ordinary seamen, firemen, trimmers, and greasers, according to their horse-power. Foreign vessels, while engaging in the New Zealand coasting-trade, have to pay their crews the rate of wages current on the coast. Parliament was warned that the passing of this Act would paralyze the trade of the Colony, but passed it was—with certain not unreasonable amendments—and trade goes on precisely as before.

In 1891, moreover, the colonial laws relating to mining generally, and to coal-mining especially, were consolidated and amended. An interesting feature in the New Zealand Coal Mines' Act is the provision by which mine-owners have to contribute to a fund for the relief of miners or the families of miners in cases where men are injured or killed at work. Every quarter the owners have to pay a halfpenny per ton on the output, if it be bituminous coal; and a farthing a ton, if it be lignite. Payment is made into the nearest Post Office Savings Bank and goes to the credit of an account called "The Coal Miners' Relief Fund." From 1891 mineral rights are reserved in lands thereafter alienated by the Crown.

Most of the Labour laws are watched and administered by the Department of Labour, a branch of the public service created in 1891. It costs but £7,000 or £8,000 a year, much of which is recouped by factory fees and other receipts. It also keeps labour statistics, acts as a servants' registry office, and by publishing information, and by shifting them from congested districts, endeavours to keep down the numbers of the unemployed. In this, though it is but a palliative, it has done useful and humane work, aided—so far as the circulation of labour goes—by the State-owned railways.