A “General Factory Workers Council” must be created for enterprises of the same kind situated in the same locality or in adjoining localities and belonging to the same owners, if the Factory Workers Council in each plant so decide. This organization may either remain in juxtaposition with the Factory Workers Councils of the different plants, or it may replace them. In that case it functions as a common Factory Workers Council.
A “shop chairman” must be elected in the place of a Factory Workers Council in establishments employing less than twenty workers, of whom at least five must be electors.
There is finally a “Factory Assembly” composed of all the regular employés of the factory. It is convened by the president of the Factory Council. He must convoke it if the employer or at least one-quarter of the workers demand it.
III.—The powers of the Factory Workers Councils are two kinds; social and economic. With one or two exceptions they are both purely deliberative in character.
SOCIAL POWERS:
(A) Conditions of Work.
(1) The Factory Workers Council supervises the execution of legal decrees, of collective bargains and of arbitration decisions in favour of the workers. The regulation of the conditions of work by collective bargaining remains the essential purpose of the Vocational Unions. The Factory Workers Councils cannot and must not replace this general trade union agreement by a regulation which would intervene between the workers of any single factory and the management of that factory, for the conditions of labour, particularly wage scales, must be fixed not simply according to the conditions prevailing in any single factory, but according to the general situation of the industry. On the other hand, the Factory Workers Councils must see to it that the conditions of work agreed to between the manufacturer’s union and the labour organizations are strictly carried out, and must adjust any difficulties that may arise in their application. Each Council must perform the same function in regard to the execution of arbitration decisions and the carrying out of legislative regulatory provisions relative to the condition of the workers.
(2) The Factory Workers Councils co-operate in the fixing of wages and other conditions of work, when these questions are not settled by collective agreement. But it is understood that, even in such a case, the Factory Workers Councils must act in accord with the Trade Unions concerned.
(3) They co-operate with the employer in the adoption of rules for the factory within the framework of the collective bargains in operation.
(4) They examine the questions of pensions for wounded veterans and compensation for those hurt in course of work.