R v Dunlop Rubber Australia Ltd; Ex parte Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union [1957] HCA 19

High Court of Australia Dixon C.J. Webb, Fullagar, Kitto and Taylor JJ. R v Dunlop Rubber Australia Ltd; Ex parte Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union [1957] HCA 19

ORDER Order nisi for writ of prohibition discharged with costs.

Cur. adv. vult.

April 5, 1957 Dixon C.J., Webb, Fullagar, Kitto and Taylor JJ.

The Court delivered the following written judgment:—

This application for a writ of prohibition quoad directed to a conciliation commissioner depends upon the ambit of two industrial disputes which are pending before him for settlement as consolidated matters. The disputes are the outcome of logs of demands but, unlike the usual objection that an industrial arbitrator has gone, or is invited to go, beyond the ambit of the dispute, the present objection does not depend upon the contents of the logs. The logs are drawn so as to cover the subject matter in contest. But the industrial dispute depends entirely on the delivery of the logs by or to the organisation followed by non-compliance with the claims they contain. It does not arise out of any actual conduct of specific employees or groups of employees. What is said by the prosecutor seeking the writ of prohibition is that the capacity of the organisation to raise a dispute by delivering or accepting delivery of a log of claims is limited to the purposes for which it was organised and registered under the Conciliation and Arbitration Act. The organisation was registered in 1911 under what was then Pt. V of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904-1910 as an association of employees in or in connexion with the rubber industry. In 1954 and the following year the organisation made applications for the enlargement of the description of the industry. The first of these was dismissed and the second, on objection being taken, was not persisted in, and it remains true that the registration of the respondent organisation is as an association of employees in or in connexion with the rubber industry.