Labour policy—false and true

by Lynden Livingston Macassey

Regulation of Factory Conditions

The Government is however bound to assert its right to intervene, in order to prevent the existence of, and, where they have arisen, to remove, industrial conditions which are injurious to the health and welfare of the workers as a whole or any particular section of them. This is action in respect of which every Government would always have behind it the full approval of the social conscience. But for the intervention of the Government in days gone by, the dehumanizing conditions attending child-labour and the employment of women in workshops would never have been removed, and English factories would not be to-day as they are, the first in the world for health, sanitation and good amenities. In the early days of last century, when factory legislation was first proposed, the employers of one large Yorkshire woollen town came in formal deputation to London to protest that, if there were any interference by Act of Parliament with their liberty to employ as they pleased, in their woollen manufactories, young children for such hours as they thought fit, a death-blow would be struck to the trade of England. Those days have gone, and with them that class of employer.

Under the Factory Acts and the skilled and far-sighted supervision of the Home Office Factory Inspectors, an immense amount has been done to promote the health of the workers, the safety of their occupations, and freedom from preventible dangers. None but the most hardened of individualistic employers—and few of them now remain—object to sound and reasonable State regulation in matters such as these. He welcomes it for his own protection.

Conciliation and not Intervention

It is more in regard to industrial disputes concerning wages and conditions of employment that the Government is too prone to intervene. There must always be a Ministry of Labour to keep in close touch with industrial disputes. Such a Ministry, though it should in the first instance leave employers and employed to discuss matters through the conciliation machinery that exists in each particular industry, yet, by discreet and impartial action, can do most valuable work in smoothing over ruptures in negotiations when neither side from motives of dignity or strategy will move. That is a different thing altogether from the Cabinet rushing in. The public will never know the extent to which industrial harmony in this country has been preserved on occasions of stress by the efforts towards conciliation exerted by the Ministry of Labour and its predecessor, the Conciliation Department of the Board of Trade, and sometimes under the greatest difficulties. At times when the Ministry had arranged between employers and Trade Unions a formula for the solution of a wage dispute or the termination of a strike or other industrial controversy, the recalcitrant leaders of some Union, entering into temporary alliance with other turbulent spirits, would speed found in deputation to the Cabinet at 10, Downing Street, and seldom be denied admission. Frequently, other terms would be suggested by the Cabinet for the sake of peace, probably more favourable to the workers than those arranged by the Ministry of Labour. The results were disastrous, the prestige of the Ministry suffered a serious relapse, the repute of the Trade Union leaders who agreed terms with the Ministry was damaged in the eyes of their members almost irretrievably, the rebellious section of the Union was given a resounding advertisement at the expense of industrial constitutional government—no surer way to sow the seeds of disruption and indiscipline in any Union.

Protection of the Community

But it will be asked what is to happen when the employers and Unions concerned in our great national industries decline to come together. In that event, the Government, through the Ministry of Labour, must, as the latter has so frequently done with tact and efficiency, endeavour to bring the two sides to a conference. That can usually be done. The Ministry has power under the Industrial Courts Act, 1919, to appoint a Court of Inquiry, but this power in practice is of little use unless both sides agree. Public opinion, however, can always be relied on strongly to resent employers and unions standing at arm’s length; but before it can, or will, operate, a definite open effort must be made to put them into touch with one another. Negotiations once instituted may culminate in an agreement, or end in a rupture, so that a strike or lock-out appears inevitable. Then there is generally but one sound course for the Government to pursue: at once to refer the dispute through the appropriate Government Department to the Industrial Court, and obtain its impartial and experienced decision upon the issue. Whether either or both parties will submit to the arbitrament of the Court is purely voluntary—we have not compulsory industrial arbitration in this country. It has failed in Canada and Australia; it failed here disastrously during the war. If men are to be compelled to accept an award, employers must be compelled, if the Court so decide, to carry on their works at a loss. But the public has no patience with any party to a wages dispute who will not agree to the reference of his claim to an independent tribunal, or who, having agreed to the submission, refuses to accept the award. One of the most important present-day functions of such a tribunal is to analyse the claim and see to what extent the claim is a genuine industrial demand, or part of the revolutionary programme of extremists for squeezing all private profit out of industry so as to force “nationalization and democratic control” or some other favourite socialistic scheme. The one fatal course is for the Cabinet to attempt itself to handle industrial disputes.

Still, after or without an inquiry by the Industrial Court, a strike or lock-out may occur. Then the primary duty of the Government is to stand firm, refuse all concessions, and protect the community; nothing less is adequate for the maintenance of social order. Too often employers and Unions complacently think that the Government should stand aside and let them fight it out over the prostrate public. In saying that they forget the paramount interests of the community. Every principle of democratic government negatives the right of a section of the community so to attempt to enforce its arbitrary will, and where, by refusing an independent arbitration and then calling a strike or lock-out, it does so, it is the plain duty of the Government to provide for the continuance of public services and to maintain a skeleton organization in being for that purpose. This is not acting as strike-breaker between employer and employed. But let not the measures for the protection of the community be taken in stealth. Why should there be any secrecy about the matter? The obligation and intention of the Government always so to act should be openly affirmed. As Labour has officially adopted the anti-social policy of “direct action,” the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 should be repealed. Whatever reason of political expediency—there was none in law or in logic—justified the application of the Act to cases of economic strikes between employers and employed, no pretext remains for its retention in cases of strikes against the community, especially where an independent inquiry has been refused. The Government can successfully measure its strength against any such strike, if only it will give the fullest possible publicity to the issues, for public opinion will always split like a steel wedge the solidarity of such anti-social action.

Wages in Unorganized Industries

One particular class of wages questions does demand intervention by the Government. In well-ordered industries, where organizations exist effectively representing the employers and employed engaged in the industry, wages and conditions ought to be left as matters for collective bargaining. There are, however, many industries which are so scattered through the country or so subject to conditions incompatible with good organization as to make collective bargaining impossible. In them reasonable minimum wages and conditions must be secured, and it is the duty of the Government to see that such provision is made, unless it is prepared to acquiesce in “sweated labour trades.” Hitherto, the provision has taken the form of a Trade Board for the industry under the Trade Boards Act, and there is no doubt that type of organization must continue in appropriate cases. Much criticism has been levelled against the Trade Boards, on which Lord Cave’s Committee[20] has now reported fully. From their inception up to the war, Trade Boards on the whole were successful. The defects that subsequently developed in the system were due to the fact that the far-flung series of Trade Boards, constituted immediately after the war, had none of the experience nor traditions of the old Boards; their chairmen and independent members were very largely persons without practical experience of industrial problems, and necessarily of that category, because of the large number of such appointments to be filled. They did not confine themselves to prescribing minimum wages and conditions—their proper function—so as to avoid sweated conditions, but they attempted to regulate actual wages and conditions, a very different matter. They also applied war-time standards to peace-time circumstances, and that naturally plunged a nascent and struggling industry into great difficulty.