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 ARBITRATION

AND

CONCILIATION

appeal to the Board of Trade to appoint an umpire in case of a deadlock. Eighteen hoards are known to have already adopted this course. The figures given above show that the Conciliation Act of 1896 has by no means, like previous legislation, been a dead letter, though the number of actual disputes settled is naturally small compared with the total number annually recorded. In spite of the complete discretion given to the Board of Trade as regards the offer of its services and to the parties as regards acceptance of its intervention, experience in the great engineering dispute of 1897 and the South Wales coal dispute of 1898, appears to show that public opinion may put pressure on the Board to attempt mediation in a dispute which has attracted popular attention, whatever may be the attitude of the parties directly concerned ; and there has been a tendency in some cases to make the action or inaction of the Department a subject of parliamentary debate. Under these conditions intervention must sometimes lead to disappointment, and the danger must also be borne in mind that the expectation of official intervention may occasionally lead the losing side to prolong a hopeless dispute. If, however, direct official mediation in labour disputes is attended with difficulties, these do not apply to the appointment by the Board of Trade of umpires and arbitrators, on an application by both parties or by a voluntary conciliation board. Arbitration and conciliation in labour disputes as practised in the United Kingdom are entirely voluntary, both as regards the initiation and conduct of the ’forlorn* ne g0tiati°ns and the carrying out of the agreepulsioa. meut resulting therefrom. In all these respects arbitration, though terminating in what is called a binding award, is on precisely the same legal footing as conciliation, which results in a mutual agreement. Various proposals have been made (and in some cases carried into effect in certain countries) for introducing an element of compulsion into this class of proceeding. There are three stages at which compulsion may conceivably be introduced. (1) The parties may be compelled by law to submit their dispute to some tribunal or board of conciliation ; (2) the board of conciliation or arbitration may have power to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents; (3) the parties may be compelled to observe the award of the board of arbitration. The most far-reaching scheme of compulsory arbitration in force in any country is that embodied in the New Zealand Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894. Bills have been introduced into the British House of Commons for clothing voluntary boards of conciliation and arbitration, under certain conditions, with powers to require attendance of witnesses and production of documents, without, however, compelling the parties to submit their disputes to these boards or to abide by their decisions. In the United Kingdom, however, more attention has recently been given to the question of strengthening the sanction for the carrying out of awards and agreements than of compelling the parties to enter into such arrangements. An interesting step towards the solution of the difficulty of enforcement in certain cases is perhaps afforded by the provisions of the terms of settlement of the dispute in the boot and shoe trade drawn up at the Board of Trade in 1895. Under this agreement ,£1000 was deposited by each party with trustees, who were directed by the trust-deed to pay over to either party, out of the money deposited by the other, any sum which might be awarded as damages by the umpire named in the deed, for the breach of the agreement or of any award made by an arbitration board in consonance with it. Up to the present only one claim for damages has been sustained under this agreement, the amount of the damages given against the union being £300. Nevertheless it cannot be doubted that the

IN

LABOUR

553

pecuniary liability of the parties has given stability to the work of the local arbitration boards, and the satisfaction of both sides with the arrangement is shown by the fact that the trust-deed, which lapsed in March 1900, was renewed for a further period of two years. Theoretically a trust deed of this kind can only offer a guarantee up to the point at which the original deposit on one side or the other is exhausted, as it is impossible to compel either party to renew the deposit. A proposal was made by the Duke of Devonshire and certain of his colleagues on the Boyal Commission on Labour for empowering associations of employers and employed to acquire, if they desired it, sufficient legal personality and corporate character to enable them to sue each other or their own members for breach of agreement. This would give the association aggrieved by a breach of award the power of suing the defaulting organization to recover damages out of their corporate funds, while each association could exact penalties from its members for such a breach. For this reason the suggestion has met with a good deal of support by those interested in arbitration and conciliation. Apart, however, from any suspicions entertained of it by workmen’s associations, the question is not free from difficulties. The object of the change would be to convert what are at present only morally binding understandings into legally enforceable contracts. But apart from the possibility that some of such contracts would be held by the courts to be void as being “in restraint of trade,” the tendency might be to give a strict legal interpretation to working agreements which might deprive them of some of their effectiveness for the settlement of the conditions of future contracts between employers and workmen, while possibly deterring associations from entering into such agreements for fear of litigation. Individuals, moreover, could avoid liability by leaving their associations. Many persons are therefore of opinion that the present imperfect sanction for agreements and awards must be accepted as the lesser of two evils. In countries like New Zealand, where the parties are compelled to submit their differences to arbitration, some of the above objections do not apply. The following statistics are based on the reports of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade on Strikes and Lock-outs. The number of boards of conciliation and arbitration known to have settled disputes in 1899 was 53, of which 50 agencies. come under the head of “trade,” 2 of “district,” and 1 of “general” boards. So far as known about 139 boards are in existence, but several of these did no active work in 1899. Of the 50 trade boards, 11 are connected with the boot and shoe trade, 9 with engineering and shipbuilding, 7 with coal-mining, 13 with iron and steel and other metal trades, 7 with the building trades, and the others with various miscellaneous industries. The importance of the questions dealt with by these boards differs so very greatly—ranging from the classification of a sample to an alteration of wages affecting hundreds of thousands of men—that the statistics of the number of cases settled tend to be somewhat misleading. Nevertheless the following figures may be of some interest. Altogether, 1232 cases were considered by the boards in 1899, of which 506 were withdrawn or settled independently of the boards, and 51 were still unsettled at the end of the year. The remaining 675 cases were settled, 503 by the board or committees and 172 by arbitrators or umpires. The great majority of the cases settled were purely local questions. Thus 350 cases—or more than half the total—were dealt with by the “joint committees” in the Northumberland and Durham coal trades, which confine their action to local questions, such. S. I. — 70