I think, therefore, that just because of this extreme step in organisation which the Auer Motion takes in proposing Labour Boards and Labour Chambers, as instruments of Labour Protection, it behoves me not to pass it by with indifference, but on the contrary to dwell upon it at some length.
In the first place let us construct in our own minds a picture of the new form of organisation proposed in the Auer Motion.
In the place of Art. IX. in the existing Imp. Ind. Code, a new Chap. IX. would have to be inserted, dealing with “an Imperial Labour Board, District Labour Boards, Labour Chambers, and Labour Courts of Administration” (§§ 131-143).
1. The Imperial Labour Board and the Imperial Labour Parliament.
The Imperial Labour Board. Its organisation would be determined by special Imperial legislation. Probably equal representation of classes is intended in this Central Bureau, which would act together with the hitherto essentially bureaucratic Imperial Insurance Board. Its duties would consist: first, in supervising so far as possible, the whole system of Labour Protection as demanded in the Auer Bill (§§ 105-125); further, in affording protection against the competition of penal labour; finally, “in enforcing such measures and conducting such enquiries as may be necessary to the well-being of the whole body of wage-earners, including apprentices, in any kind of industry.” Its duties would therefore extend far beyond the limits of Labour Protection in the strict sense, and it would be a general Central Bureau of aids to Labour, in which the Imperial Insurance Board would soon become incorporated.
The Labour Parliament (Diet of Labour Chambers). I take leave thus to designate the representative central organ proposed (although of course it is not brought forward in these terms in the heading of the new Chap. IX. of the Auer Bill) since it is clear that the Imperial Labour Board is practically only intended to be the executive organ of this democratic industrial Council of the nation. Sections 140-142 of the Auer Motion require that: § 140 “It shall be the duty of the Imperial Labour Board to summon once a year representatives from the collective Labour Chambers to a general deliberation on industrial interests. To this General Council each Labour Chamber shall send one delegate to represent the employers, and one the body of wage-earners. The choice of the representatives shall be made by each class separately. The chair shall be taken at the Council by a member of the Imperial Labour Board, but he and his colleagues shall have no right to vote. The Council shall determine its own standing orders and the orders of the day; the sittings to be public. § 141. The members of the Labour Chambers shall receive daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses. § 142. The Imperial Government shall pay the costs of the arrangements enumerated in §§ 131-140; they shall be entered yearly in the imperial accounts.”
Thus we should have a national Labour Parliament—formed from the district Labour Chambers—with equal representation of both classes, receiving grants from the Imperial exchequer, undertaking the general supervision of industrial interests and acting as a check on the Imperial Labour Board. By the simple process of throwing overboard the nominees of the employers, this Labour Parliament might at any time become a pure parliament of labourers, or “People’s Parliament,” and the Imperial Labour Board might resolve itself into the central ministry of a purely “People’s State.”
Such a state of things would obviously be the realisation of the extreme Social Democratic order of State.
It must be admitted that no secret is made of this fact, nor yet of the basis on which the whole edifice is raised.
(2) Labour Boards and Labour Courts of Arbitration, Labour Chambers.