How Britain Does It

Just in time for public consumption over the long Labor Day weekend, President Roosevelt last week released the report of his Commission on Industrial Relations in Great Britain, basic document for next winter's Congressional debates on altering the National Labor Relations Act. It is a cogent, dispassionate, impartial treatise, the product of nine good minds working in politely self-critical harmony.-- Its findings were purely factual. It contained no shadow of moralizing for the benefit of U. S. employers, employes or politicians.

After roaming through the British Isles for three weeks, ferreting into employers' offices, union headquarters, Government bureaus and archives--everywhere accorded a maximum of British courtesy and patience--the nine reported:

P:Great Britain and Ireland have 1,041 trade unions, whose development began in 1825. The 5,308,000 members (as of 1936) are roughly one-third of the workers eligible. About half the unions are grouped, for purposes of collective bargaining, into 63 federations. Most of the unions thus federated belong to a Trades Union Congress (comparable to A. F. of L. or C. I. O.).

P:Britain's employers are organized into parallel groups: industrial associations formed first to combat, later to bargain with, the labor unions. There are 266 general employer associations, 1,550 locals. At the top is a National Confederation of Employers' Organizations.

P:"Collective agreement" in Britain does not mean a labor contract between one employer and one union. It means a contract between a group of associated employers and a union or a group of associated unions.

P:Basic wage & hour disputes are negotiated first nationally, not locally or individually; if these negotiations fail, both sides prefer going to an impartial umpire, whose decision is usually accepted though neither side binds itself beforehand. Local disputes are carried up, through district committees, to a national joint board of the industry. "The objective is to settle locally as many disputes as possible, and if they cannot be so settled, to make the procedure short enough to satisfy the workers . . . long enough to allay the tension." Unauthorized local strikes are frowned on by union higher-ups and are rare.

P:"Collective agreements rest upon moral force rather than legal compulsion." Neither side wants law to back it up. Exception: wages (but only wages) in the weaving section of the cotton textile industry; in 1934, both sides sought an Act of Parliament which froze rates they had already collectively agreed upon. Cause: chiseling by unorganized employers and weavers.

P:British Labor quickly settles its "demarcational" (jurisdictional) disputes by committees within its own hierarchy.

P:Organizational disputes between unions are rare because of rules laid down within the Trades Union Congresses, based on the premise that no union has an exclusive right to organize any class of worker.

P:Trade unions (which in Britain means associations of employers as well as of workers) enjoy not only a legal status but immunity from charges of "restraint of trade." The famed Trade Disputes & Trade Unions Act of 1927, inspired by the General Strike of 1926, outlaws only strikes by unions in one industry called in sympathy for discontented unions in another industry and calculated to coerce the Government. No union may be sued for a sympathetic strike within a given industry even though it is designed to coerce the Government. Thus, "for ordinary industrial strikes, the immunity of trade unions is preserved."

P:Parliament has legalized all such picketing as does not 1) block traffic, 2) intimidate non-strikers, 3) lead to a breach of the peace. Result: "violence on the part of the workers, and provocative tactics on the part of the employers, have not for a long time played any significant part in industrial disturbances." C, British trade unions cannot incorporate but they may register, which gains them continuity of being and certain tax exemptions; or they can get a certificate, which gains no tax exemptions but proves title to a union's legal immunities for striking. Neither registration nor certification is required by law.

P:In the British Government, under the Minister of Labor, is the following machinery for keeping industrial peace:

1) A panel of "qualified and experienced" citizens available as arbiters.

2) A staff of full-time conciliators.

3) An industrial court, of last resort, to which the Minister of Labor may refer deadlocked cases if both sides consent. Its findings are not binding unless both sides agree to that in advance. It writes no opinions, for neither employers nor employes wish to build a body of industrial case-law.

4) Courts of inquiry, which the Minister of Labor may appoint if a major public interest is at stake.

5) "Trade Boards," which the Minister may appoint in any trade which he considers lacks proper regulatory machinery. In 1938, trade boards were applied to the baking and road-making trades. Their job: to help employers and employes in those trades get organized.

P:From a British commission's report of 1894 tne President's commission quoted: ". . . The most quarrelsome period of a trade's existence is when it is just emerging from the patriarchal condition in which each employer governs his establishment and deals with his own men with no outside interference, but has not yet fully entered into that other condition in which transactions take place between strong associations fully recognizing each other."

*The nine: W. Ellison Chalmers, William H. Davis, Marion Dickerman, Lloyd K. Garrison, Henry I. Harriman, Charles R. Hook, Anna Marie Rosenberg, Gerard Swope, Robert J. Watt.

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