Notes on Industrial Legislation

Notes on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, Industrial Relations Amendment Act 1976 and the Industrial Relations Amendment Bill (No. 3)

New Direction for Industrial Chaplains in New Zealand

The Rev. Canon Bill Wright, senior industrial chaplain on Teesside, U.K., spent eleven weeks in New Zealand this winter as the guest of ITIM (Inter-Church Trade & Industry Mission). His purpose in being here was to share insights from his own industrial involvement in the U.K., and to enable ITIM to review its own work and lay plans for the future.

Industrial Relations in New Zealand: New Vista for Collective Bargaining: Extension or Restriction?

The seemingly unimportant change of term from “industrial agree­ment” as it appeared in the now repealed Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1954 to “collective agreement” in the Industrial Relations Act 1973 replacing the former statute has signified an immense sociological restructuring which affects the whole field of industrial relations, particularly the potentiality for genuine collective bargaining

The History and Development of Wage Fixing Legislation in the Private Sector

In New Zealand wage fixing was institutionalised at a very early stage in the economic development of the country. New Zealand wanted its workers and employers to be nurtured and controlled by legislation, and wages and conditions of employment and disputes concerning these matters determined within a compulsory system of industrial conciliation and arbitration. Under these procedures the Court of Arbitration in the early period of industrial relations in New Zealand played a very positive part in the determination of the level of wages in the contract of employment.

News and Views

News and views Canterbury and Otago, Wellington, Auckland, Sydney

Industrial Law Cases

Details from; Hellaby Shortland Ltd v Weir, Wilson (Inspector of Awards) v. Heylen Centre of Marketing, Social and Opinion Research Ltd., Ander (Inspector of Awards) v. Malcolm Furlong Ltd., J. Wattie Canneries Ltd. v North Island Electrical and Related Trades I.U.W.

Legislation on Redundancy?

Members of the Industrial Relations Society will know that submissions were last year presented on its behalf to the Parliamentary Committee considering the Labour Government’s Severance and Re-employment Bill. Those submissions appeared to be well received and therefore the Hon. J. B. Gordon, the present Minister of Labour and a member of the Committee, had no hesitation in accepting an invitation to address the society on the question of redundancy. This he did in Auckland on 11 May of this year in a prepared address, subsequently answering questions and taking part in what was at times a spirited discussion from the floor.

Ideology and Industrial Relations in New Zealand

It is a truism that there is in New Zealand culture a widespread if inarticulate suspicion of ideas, of theory, of ideology and a general preference for the practically useful, for the matter-of-fact treatment of things, for the pragmatic. While the polarisation of theory and practice is not a logically sustainable one — pragmatism after all is based on some theory, some system or principle purporting to explain or predict relationships between events — nevertheless it has in New Zealand a strong emotive appeal that can be used to stigmatise those who profess a particular ideology or who dabble in the ‘unreal’ world of ideas.

An Introduction to the Industrial Court

From 1894, when the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act sprang from the Fabian brain of New Zealand’s first Minister of Labour, William Pernber Reeves, the Arbitration Court had both a judicial and an arbitral function; that is, after first arbitrating between the employers and the workers’ organisations and “awarding” them wages, hours and conditions of employment to live by, the Court could then don judicial garb and interpret those very same awards whenever disputes as to their meaning or application arose. An award is something akin to a statute. But the techniques of statutory interpretation were never a burden to the Arbitration Court, as the Court as law interpreter always understood the intent of the Court as law giver, and interstices could be filled according to the original intent of the parties.

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News and views from Canterbury and Otago, Wellington, Auckland, Sydney