Report of the British Economic Mission to Australia

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 179824683X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-182286

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the British Economic Mission to Australia

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Office

Year of publication:: 7th January 1929

Scope:: 63 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Main problems

Collection:: Economics Books

The basic wage. 64. The indictment of the system of the Arbitration Courts which we have heard is a heavy one; and we feel that it is well founded on many grounds, and particularly on the ground that the system has tended to consolidate employers and employees into two opposing camps, and has lessened the inducement to either side to resort to round table conferences for that frank and confidential discussion of difficulties in the light of mutual under- standing and sympathy which is the best means of arriving at fair and workable industrial agreements. 65. A change in the method prevalent in Australia of dealing with industrial disputes appears to us to be essential, and we hold that there should be a minimum of judicial and governmental inter- ference in them except in so far as matters affecting the health and safety of persons engaged in industry may be concerned. 66. If the settlement of industrial disputes must continue to be referred to Arbitration Courts, we think that the faults of the system will continue to be intensified unless an end can be put to overlapping and conflict between the spheres of Commonwealth and State jurisdiction, and the Courts themselves are laid under an unqualified statutory instruction to have regard to the economic affects of their awards both on the industry with which the awards may be immediately concerned and on other industries which may be indirectly affected by them. We think, too, that it should be a condition of access to an Arbitration Court that the parties should rst have made a bona fide attempt to arrive at a settlement of their dispute by way of conference with each other, and that a full statement of the points in regard to which they have failed to arrive at an agreement should be laid before the Court. This pro- sedure should secure that if either side has shown itself unreason- ible the Court shall be made aware of it. 67. Further, a system of wage fixation resting upon a basic money wage which rises or falls with a varying index figure of the cost of living is open to the gravest criticism, as tending to deprive employees of any interest in the prosperity of the industry with which they are connected. ILiet us assume that by better, more energetic, and more willing work on the part of all concerned from the highest to the lowest, the output of Australian industries were increased with no increase in overhead cost. The natural economic affect would be that prices all round would fall and that consump- tion and profits would rise ; but as the cost of living would fall the basic wage would also fall, and with it all wages fixed by the Arbitration Courts in relation to the basic wage with margins for special skill and the like. Thus the system is such as to give the worker in industry no interest in a cheaper cost of living, and no inducement to that increased efficiency which would tend to bring t about. Tn such a case as we have imagined it would be only right that wages should rise and that the workmen should share in the increased prosperity so largely attributable to them. It is only

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