Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Social Movements - 1. Labour Questions and Social politics - Conciliation and Arbitration in Labour Disputes. By H. Elmquist
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v. social movements.
the parties to the quarrel to act, now empowered by some official body to
mediate with a view to concluding some conflict of more serious dimensions.
In that wise several extensive labour disputes in the course of the last few
years have been settled, i. e. by a method of conciliation, others again have
been brought to an end through the agency of a Board of Arbitration, specially
appointed for the particular case in point. As a rule the proceedings have been
conducted in both types of instances by a disinterested outsider.
For long enough people were content to rely upon a conciliation or arbitration
organization devised for the particular occasion. The attempts that gradually
came to be made, by rules agreed upon beforehand, to evolve some machinery
for dealing with disputes when they cropped up, marked consequently a distinct
advance.’ As an example, the settlement of the great building trades dispute
in 1000 embodied stipulations prescribing the adoption of methods of
arbitration and conciliation during the continuance in force of the agreement then
drawn up. Similar arrangements were come to likewise in a number of
handicraft trades from time to time. Probably the earliest in date was the scheme
for arbitration adopted by the typographers to avoid the risk of disputes
breaking out between masters and men.
As the systems of internal organization developed, first among the workmen
and later among the employers of labour (vide special Article), and as the plan
of collective bargaining in drawing up contracts or agreements came more and
more into use, such definite .rules for the avoidance of labour conflicts grew
increasingly usual. Thus in the trade (collective) agreements, in addition to a
prohibition, explicit or implicit of any cessation of work during the period for which
the agreement is to hold good (nowadays, however, most frequently excluded so far as
sympathy conflicts are concerned), stipulations are inserted providing for the
settlement of any disputes or differences of opinion that may arise by means of
a Conciliation, or more usually an Arbitration, Board, to be constituted of an
equal number of representatives of the two parties and to be presided over, as
a rule, by some impartial chairman.
In certain collective agreements of a national character entered into during the
last ten years, more detailed prescriptions as to the course of action to be pursued
in this regard have been laid down, e. g. for the Tobacco Industry, Mechanical
Works and Electrical Industries, for Building Trades, for Non-State Railways and
Typographical Trades. In all these prescribed courses of action there occur the
following points: Questions at issue between the parties to be submitted to
more than one instance for deliberation, boards to be constituted with equal
representation from the two sides, under the chairmanship of a disinterested
person, and elected, save in the case of the Mechanical Works, for a prescribed
period of time.
As regards differences of principle existing in those various prescribed courses
of action, the chief one is that in the case of the four first mentioned
arbitration is only to be had recourse to when the dispute is a so-termed judicial one
(i. e. bears upon the interpretation of the agreement in force), while for the
typographical trades and the non-state railways arbitration is permissible in the
last resort for the allaying of all divergencies of opinion arising between masters
and men.
The course of action for adoption in case of disputes that is laid down by the
collective agreement, only as a rule holds good during the continuance of
the agreement and in general merely bears reference to the construction
to be put upon the terms of the particular agreement in force at the time; it
does not provide for the circumstances prevailing when a new agreement is in
process of arrangement, that is to say not when the danger of difficulty is greatest.
However, nowadays, that unsatisfactory feature is often eliminated by a rider
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