Day 145 - 29 Jun 95 - Page 28
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The Labour Relations, or there is a finding
3 against an employer or maybe against a union ---
4 A. That is correct, my Lord.
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6 Q. -- in relation to its practices. I think what Mr. Morris
7 is asking you is, quite apart from publishing an annual
8 report which sets out how many hearings there have been and
9 how many findings there have been against employers or
10 unions, does it produce statistics of what percentage of
11 violations it believes have come to its attention?
12 A. The Labour Board, my Lord, is a five member panel Board
13 that sits in Washington and reaches final decisions on
14 cases. They would -- boy -- I do not want to say this with
15 absolute certainty. I go back to when I was with the
16 agency from 67 to 92; I do not believe that they keep, you
17 know, track of which ones they agreed with and which ones
18 they dismissed.
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20 Q. No, you see, I can understand that they could give figures
21 in which ones they made findings in favour of the applicant
22 and in which ones they dismissed it. What I think -- you
23 will correct me if I am wrong -- Mr. Morris is getting at
24 is whether they give any figures of the ones which have
25 gone uncovered altogether. I have a difficulty with that
26 because I cannot see at the moment how they would know
27 unless the union, for instance, has chosen to bring it
28 before the Board, that an employer has transgressed in some
29 way.
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31 I would have thought -- and this is certainly no jibe at
32 your country; it might be the same in this country -- there
33 are a lot of violations which no-one in an official
34 capacity gets to know about at all.
35 A. My Lord, let me explain the procedure. It does not
36 cost anyone a penny to bring a case before the National
37 Labour Relations Board. Then if the National Labour
38 Relations Board, they then, Board agents (as I was once) we
39 then investigated the matter at no cost at all to the
40 charging party. If, in fact, there was merit to the
41 allegation and a complaint needed to issue, a trial lawyer
42 (and I was one of those at one time) would then present the
43 case to an administrative law judge of this Board at no
44 cost again to the charging party, the person who instituted
45 the action.
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47 So that, my Lord, if there are violations and it is a
48 matter of any interest at all by an individual, charges
49 would be filed because it costs them nothing.
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51 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You ask your question again.
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53 MR. MORRIS: I will do it by reference to an example. We have
54 heard that a certain amount of accidents in this country --
55 certain accidents, it is compulsory to report. It is a
56 violation, a company can be fined, if you do not report it
57 and do not report it within a certain time, right? But
58 having said that, it is worked out, say, for the building
59 industry, that only 10 per cent of such reportable
60 accidents get to the authorities, right, even though that
