Arbitration, an ordinary Court of Law, and a Court of Appeal, but also a Court of Conciliation; and the conciliatory element is predominant. In the settlement of a dispute in Christchurch between the Sheepowners’ Union and the Shearers’ Union, which threatened at one time to disorganise one of the large industries of the colony, the Court undertook the functions of a Conciliation Board. By its intervention, a disastrous quarrel was averted, and an agreement was come to which, apparently, at the time, satisfied both parties.
The Court’s proceedings have often been stopped in the course of hearing a dispute to allow the parties to meet in conference. On several occasions, the President has asked representatives of the parties to meet him privately in his room, so that he might, by his advice and legal knowledge, help to bring about an amicable settlement. In many instances these conferences are quite successful; and when that is so, the agreement is entered in the Court’s records as an award, and is given the full force of a judicial decision.
The tribunal that was expected to be a tyrant has proved to be a mediator. There are hardly any limits to its powers; but it is as conciliatory as it is powerful, and it leaves no stone unturned to bring parties together without the intervention of the law.
The Court’s constant affirmation of the principle of conciliation is one of the discoveries in respect to the scheme’s operation. It has shown that both conciliation and arbitration are integral parts of the scheme, and that they may go hand-in-hand, and, indeed, ought to do so. New Zealand would have found conciliation without arbitration a yielding reed to lean upon in times of industrial strife. Had Mr. Reeves listened to those critics who wanted to strike out his compulsory clauses, the scheme would have been a complete failure from the start. It is only in the iron-bound compulsory clauses of the Act that finality is reached.
If the Act has not helped the colony’s progress, as has been alleged, it has not retarded it. Since the introduction of the Act, New Zealand has experienced no strikes or lock-outs, except of a very insignificant character, and the
