The Question of a Single Minimum
Criticism of Trade Boards has fastened on their power to determine higher rates of wages for skilled workers, one of the additional powers that they secured under the Act of 1918. There are many who agree that a bare minimum should be fixed by a statutory authority with legal powers, but think that this should be the beginning and end of law’s interference. As to this, it must be said, first, that the wide margin between a subsistence wage and a human needs wage, brought out by Mr. Rowntree’s calculations, shows that there can be no question at present of a single minimum. To give the “human needs” figure legislative sanction would at present be Utopian. Very few Trade Boards ventured so far even when trade was booming. The Boards move in the region between bare subsistence and “human needs,” as trade conditions allow, and can secure a better figure for some classes of their clients when they cannot secure it for all. They therefore need all the elasticity which the present law gives them.
On the other hand, it is contended with some force by the Cave Committee that it is improper for appointed members to decide questions of relatively high wages for skilled men or for the law to enforce such wages by criminal proceedings, and the Committee accordingly propose to differentiate between higher and lower minima both as regards the method of determination and of enforcement. I have not time here to discuss the details of their proposal, but I wish to say a word on the retention—if in some altered shape—of the powers given by the Act of 1918. The Trade Board system has been remarkable for the development of understanding and co-operation between representatives of employers and workers. Particularly in the work of the administrative committees, matters of detail which might easily excite controversy and passion are habitually handled with coolness and good sense in the common interest of the trade. A number of the employers have not merely acquiesced in the system, but have become its convinced supporters, and this attitude would be more common if certain irritating causes of friction were removed. The employer who desires to treat his workers well and maintain good conditions is relieved from the competition of rivals who care little for these things, and what he is chiefly concerned about is simplicity of rules and rigid universality of enforcement. It is this section of employers who have prevented the crippling of the Boards in a time of general reaction. It is blindness to refuse to see in such co-operation a possible basis of industrial peace, and those were right who in 1918 saw in the mechanism of the Boards the possibility, not merely of preventing industrial oppression and securing a minimum living wage, but of advancing to a general regulation of industrial relations. At that time it was thought that the whole of industry might be divided between Trade Boards and Whitley Councils, the former for the less, the latter for the more organised trades. In the result the Whitley Councils have proved to be hampered if not paralysed by the lack of an independent element and of compulsory powers.