Federated Sawmill Employees Association v James Moore & Sons Pty Ltd,[1] commonly known as the Woodworkers case[2] or the Sawmillers case[3] was a decision of the High Court of Australia in 1909 concerning the question whether the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration could make an award that was inconsistent with a State wages board determination.

[1] The case dealt with three issues, (1) whether arbitration was a judicial or legislative function, (2) the position of federal awards in relation to a conflict of laws and (3) the facts necessary to establish the existence of an interstate industrial dispute.

[6] The reserved powers doctrine was challenged by Isaacs and Higgins JJ and ultimately abandoned by the High Court in 1920 in the Engineers' Case.

[3] The paper dispute, doubted by Griffith CJ and O'Connor J in this case, would become an enduring feature of Australian industrial relations.

502–3 Prior to 1900 there had been various attempts to legislate with respect to industrial disputes, including South Australia,[15] NSW,[16] New Zealand,[17] and the United Kingdom.

[14] It was represented by Arthur and applied for an award to be made, seeking to establish the existence of an inter-state dispute by evidence they had served written claims on employers in various states.

is to be construed having regard to the rest of the Constitution, and particularly with reference to the doctrine repeatedly laid down by this Court that any invasion by the Commonwealth of the sphere of the domestic concerns of the States appertaining to trade and commerce is forbidden except so far as the invasion is authorized by some power conferred in express terms or by necessary implication".[1]: pp.

510  Isaacs and Higgins JJ had rejected the reserved powers doctrine from the moment of their appointment in 1906, a position they maintained in their judgments.

The way in which the Australian Parliament sought to deal with State laws was set out in section 30 of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act which provided that: 30.

535 Both Griffiths CJ,[1]: p. 500  and Higgins J,[1]: p. 545  were more circumspect, limiting their consideration on the question of inconsistency to whether it was possible to obey both commands.

Griffith CJ and O'Connor J rejected the attempt to establish jurisdiction to make an award by way of a "paper dispute".

The judgment of Griffith CJ was criticised by later Chief Justice Owen Dixon as taking a pedantic construction drawn from a verbal formalism.

A subsequent High Court explained the approach as follows: The basis of the application of s 109 to a State law affecting industrial relations regulated by an award is not that the award is a law of the Commonwealth within the meaning of s 109 but that the Conciliation and Arbitration Act constitutes the inconsistent Federal law inasmuch as it means that an award purporting to make an exhaustive regulation shall be treated as the exclusive determination of the industrial relations which it affects.