ccessfully 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 t