Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/735

 694

THE GREEN BAG

INDUSTRIAL

PEACE

LEGISLATION

IN

CANADA

By John King, K. C. ONE of the most important legislative measures passed during the last session of the Parliament of Canada was "An Act to aid in the Prevention and Settlement of Strikes and Lockouts in Coal Mines and Industries connected with Public Utilities," better known as "The Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, 1907." The measure originated with the Labour Department of the Government, and received the royal assent and became law on the 23rd of March. It is a natural sequence of the Conciliation Act of 1900, and the Railway Labour Disputes Act of 1903, both which are now incorporated in the Conciliation and Labour Act, Chapter 96 of the Revised Stat utes of Canada, 1906. The legislation em bodied in the statute was to a large extent the outcome of the serious dispute in con nection with the coal mines at Lethbridge in Western Canada. The Lethbridge dis pute kept the mines closed for a period of nine months, with all the attendant ills of industrial war, and contributed to bring about a fuel famine in the new provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta during the most inclement season of the year. The experience of a conflict so painful and wide spread in its effects impressed the Govern ment and Parliament with the necessity for some legislation which would provide ma chinery for the adjustment of industrial disputes that affected the public welfare so disastrously, and that should, if possible, prevent a recurrence of strikes and lockouts in connection with mines and public utility industries until at least such an adjustment had been attempted. Careful examination into the causes of these disputes had shown good ground for believing that, if the parties to a difference could only be brought together and have a frank and amicable discussion of the matters in question face to face, an

agreement would as a rule be arrived at. The object was to legislate in such a way as to secure this conference and discussion before a suspension of work instead of after wards, to avoid, in so doing, encroachment on the recognized rights of employers and employees, and to permit, where necessary, an enforcement of the new law by penalizing its deliberate and open violation. Obviously the interests of all concerned in such indus tries, — all of whom suffer in the event of hostilities — lie in the settlement of such disputes in their initial stages, and before they have assumed so serious a form as a strike or a lockout. What, therefore, the new Act seeks to do, and what, as we shall see, it has been fairly successful in accom plishing, is the maintenance of industrial peace in all public utilities such as mining, transport, street railways, telephony and telegraphy, by the reasonable requirement that, in the event of a dispute arising in any such utility, it shall be illegal to resort to a strike or a lockout (which would involve loss to employers and employed, and grave incon venience and possibly serious distress to the public at large), until the dispute has been made the subject of enquiry before a Board of Conciliation and Investigation to be estab lished by the Minister of Labour. This is, in effect, a compulsory investigation, but it has the special merit and advantage of bringing the contending parties together at the very outset of their differences, and of affording a thorough interchange of views and opinions, which experience has proved are conducive to a settlement, without a suspension of industrial operations, and without, at the same time, depriving either party of his remedy, should the judgment of the Board be unsatisfactory. These are the prominent features of the new Act. It will be interesting, however,