In South Australia, to give a brief account of the new tribunals, Boards of Conciliation may be either Private Boards, constituted under industrial agreements and endowed with such jurisdiction as may be confided to them in the agreements; or Public Boards, which include Local Boards constituted for particular localities and particular industries, and the State Board of Conciliation. In New Zealand, the first reference is to an elective Board of Conciliation constituted for the district in which the dispute has occurred. Should it fail to effect a settlement, the matter may be referred to the Court of Arbitration, which, similarly with the State Board of Conciliation in South Australia, consists of an equal number of representatives of employers and employed and a chairman nominated by the Government, who must, in the former country, be a judge of the Supreme Court. These tribunals are invested with full powers to require the attendance and examination of witnesses, and may either make an award which shall take effect for a period not exceeding two years, and may be enforced by legal process against associations and individuals, or they may confine themselves, at their discretion, to a recommendation which will be merely a direction to the parties concerned.
In South Australia the State Board has also the power to inquire into, and report upon, industrial disputes, though the parties be not registered. This portion of the Act has alone been brought into operation, and that unsuccessfully, as, though the representatives of employers and employed on the Board arrived at a unanimous decision upon a dispute affecting the rate of wages, the employer in question refused to be guided by its judgment. The general failure of the Act, though the affirmation of the principle of Conciliation has been valuable, has been due partly to the absence of serious disputes in South Australia, but principally to the unwillingness both of employers and employed to place themselves in a position in which they will lose control over the terms of employment.
The Act passed by the Government of New Zealand, on the contrary, has hitherto been entirely efficacious, and has prevented the interruption of harmonious relations between employers and employed. It was first tested upon a dispute which arose over the action of the Consolidated Goldfields Company in reducing wages in the mines from 10s. to 8s. 4d. per day. The men, who were not members of a union, went out on strike, and were then offered wages at the rate of 9s. Upon the advice of their leaders, the men accepted the offer provisionally; and, having formed themselves into a union which they promptly caused to be registered, referred the matter to the Board of Conciliation. The decision of the Board, which it is unnecessary to specify, was refused by the men, who appealed to the Court of Arbitration. The award of the latter body, which fixed the wages of miners at 9s. 6d. per day, a rate smaller than that which had been received by the men, but larger than that against which they had protested, has been observed loyally by the Company and its employés.
The next dispute arose at Christchurch upon the expiration of the agreement which had been in operation between the boot manufacturers and their workmen for several years, and upon the desire of the former to substitute new terms which were regarded as distasteful. It was concerned with several matters of detail, but hinged principally upon the question whether non-unionists should be allowed to work with unionists. As in the former case, an appeal was made from the Board of Conciliation's award to the Court of Arbitration, whose decision, it is noteworthy, both sides had signified their willingness to accept. The award applied to all the bootmakers in the Province with the exception of three or four who were not identified with the boot manufacturers' association, and was accompanied by remarks pronounced, it must be remembered, by a judge of the Supreme Court, which cannot fail to be of interest to the Trades Unionists in all parts of the world. I do not, therefore, apologise for quoting them at length:—
"The Arbitration Court has not hitherto been in the habit of giving reasons for its decision. It appears to the Court that, sitting as arbitrators, it should as a general rule follow the ordinary practice of arbitrators and simply give its decision without reasons. In the present case, however, so far as I myself am concerned, I think it is desirable that I should, with respect to part of the award, give some indications of the reasons which have induced the Court to arrive at its conclusion. The part of the award to which I refer is that which relates to clauses 1 and 2 of the general rules which the Manufacturers' Association has submitted to the Court: '1. (a) It is the individual right of the employer to decide whom he shall employ or dismiss. (b) It is the individual right of the workman to accept or refuse work from any employer. 2. Employers or employés, either individually or through any organisation, shall not discriminate for or against any person because he is or is not a member of any organisation, neither shall there be any distinction between organised or non-organised labour; both shall work under the same conditions and receive equal pay for equal work.' The Bootmakers' Union, in opposition to the rules so suggested, put forward the contention that employment should be limited to members of the Bootmakers' Union. The Court, however, is not able to accept the extreme view which has been put forward by the Bootmakers' Union. If it were accepted it might follow that an employer, who had work to do and who could not get Union men to do it, might have to bring his operations to a standstill. The effect of it also would be that non-Union men would be absolutely prevented from earning their living in the workshops of the members of the Manufacturers' Association. That, so far as I am concerned, seems to be going beyond what the Court ought to decree. On the other hand, however, I am not prepared to accept absolutely clauses 1 and 2 in the form in which the Manufacturers' Association has put them forward. The Court ought, I think, to comply with the intention of the Legislature as evidenced in the provisions of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, and ought not to do anything which is calculated to destroy or weaken any industrial organisation. The intention of the Act is indicated in its title—the Act is an Act to encourage the formation of Industrial Unions and Associations. The Court, therefore, ought not to do anything which will tend to destroy or weaken an industrial association, or interfere with the manifest intention of the Legislature as disclosed by the Act. We have this also, that for the last three years the shops of the Manufacturers' Association have been practically working as Union shops. It is true that manufacturers say—probably with truth—that they were so worked because they could not help it, but the fact remains that they have been working in that way, and the proposed new rules, as put forward by the manufacturers, expressly reverse the previous mode of working. We have this also, that the previous statement was a statement agreed to between the Manufacturers' Association and the Bootmakers' Union, the conference which followed the statement was between the Association and the Union, and the dispute now before the Court is between the Association and the Union. It is only by means of Unions that labour can take advantage of the Act. Under these circumstances, it seems to me not unreasonable that the Union should stipulate for special privileges to its members. The Union are fighting the battle, and it is fair that they should say that the results of the victory, so far as it is a victory, and has any beneficial results, should accrue to them, at any rate in the first instance. They fight the battle for their members, and not for the sake of outside labour. Under these circumstances it appears to me that it is quite reasonable that the members of the Union should have preference in employment; that members of the Union who are competent should not have to wait about while non-members of the Union are employed in the shops of the Boot Manufacturers' Association. The Court, therefore, has modified Rules 1 and 2 in this direction. I need hardly say that each case to be decided under this Act must depend on the particular circumstances attaching to it; that no one case can be treated as a precedent to any future case, and that because under the particular circumstances of a particular case, this Court has decided as it has decided, that is no reason why, under different or varying circumstances, a similar decision ought to be come to. The Court in coming to its decision, takes into consideration not general principles so much as the special circumstances of each particular case."
The award, which modified the regulations on the lines laid down by the Court, is regarded as a great triumph by Trade Unionists, who are, not unnaturally, inclined to apply it as a precedent to all organised trades.
A possible exemplification of the efficacy of the Act occurred at the end of 1896, when the engineers employed in the Australian trade of the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand asked that their wages might be raised to the rate which had prevailed before the financial troubles. They took advantage of the increased traffic caused by the holidays in order to emphasise their demands. The engineers of the ships plying in New Zealand waters made a similar request, which was at once acceded to by the Company, but did not attempt to exert undue pressure. I am not prepared to state that the difference in attitude was due to the Conciliation and Arbitration Act of the latter country, but the coincidence is calculated to encourage that belief. The Managing Director of the Company (Mr. James Mills) told me that he was a hearty supporter of compulsion, not so much because he believed in arbitration, as because a strike or lock-out was obviated, and the parties to a dispute, often trivial at the outset, were brought together before they had been embittered by mutual recriminations. Mr. Kingston, the Premier of South Australia, and the principal promoter of the South Australian Act, has written in a similar strain:—
"Conciliation Boards should be established in anticipation of the differences they are designed to prevent. On the occasion of a great strike, the public cries out for conciliation. Suggestions are received from all quarters recommending Conferences and Arbitration; but when war has been declared, and the disputants, as it were, are at each other's throats, each hopeful of ultimate success, they are seldom in the mood to listen to peacemakers. If either party fears the result of the contest, it may favour pacific counsels. There is, however, a vehement probability that the stronger party will reject all overtures and insist on an unconditional surrender and all the advantages which victory can command. The dispute is then determined, not on its merits, but by sheer strength. The vanquished, smarting under a sense of defeat and injustice, capitulate only with the view to the early renewal of the struggle under more favourable circumstances."[[11]]
(5) A large proportion of the workmen of Australasia are convinced believers in Protection in the widest sense of the word. As far as their opinion can be ascertained from the representation of Labour in Parliament, it is unanimous in Victoria, South Australia, and New Zealand. In New South Wales, as has been seen, the Labour Members have, for the sake of solidarity, sunk the fiscal issue; but the majority are Protectionists, and have proposed that the question of the tariff should be settled for a fixed period by a plebiscite. Thereby they believe that they will secure Protection and continue to be unfettered in their support of the more advanced party. In Queensland, also, the Labour programme states that the fiscal issue is not to be regarded as a party question.
Protection, the Labour Members admit, raises prices to the consumer; but they contend that, if prices are high, employers can afford to pay high wages, and that the strength of Trades Unionism should be sufficient to enforce them. To put their argument, such as it is, in a nutshell, it is better to have high prices and high wages than low prices combined with low wages and uncertain employment. Then, as combination is expected to keep wages at a high point, it is obvious that it can be exercised most effectually over a small area, and we find the South Australian Labour Members voting against a resolution in favour of inter-provincial Free Trade, and Labour Members generally imbued with an actual, if not avowed, opposition to Federation, the first result of which would, it is believed, be the removal of fiscal barriers. They profess, indeed, a desire for Federation on a democratic basis, but are, as far as their material interests are concerned, under the influence of a patriotism which is intensely provincial and does not take account of national, much less of imperial, considerations.