Читать книгу The Settlement of Wage Disputes - Herbert Feis - Страница 5

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Section 1. In any attempt to formulate principles for use in the settlement of wage disputes, past experience furnishes much guidance. What this experience consists of.—Section 2. Such principles as have been used in the settlement of wage disputes have usually resulted from compromise; reason and economic analysis have usually been secondary factors. However, industrial peace cannot be secured by a recurrent use of expedients.—Section 3. The attitude most favorable to industrial peace.

1.—The industrial life of the United States is marked by an almost continuous series of open struggles between the employers and wage earners of its highly organized industries. No one defends these struggles for their own sake. There is a general inclination, however, to regard them as a necessary accompaniment of industrial activity and change. It must not be supposed that all labor troubles are merely wage controversies—that is to say, that they are all incidental to the settlement of the wage incomes of the laborers. Many of them arise in whole or part from a shifting and conflict of ideas about various other aspects of the industrial order. It is possible, however, to concentrate attention upon those conflicts which center around the settlement of wages.

There is a quick and somewhat tumultuous stream of investigation directed to the invention and formulation of principles which could be used as a basis of settlement of wage controversies. In various countries such principles have been formally set forth and used. The awards of the War Labor Board are an example of their imperfect application. In the Industrial Court of the Commonwealth of Australia we have an example of the consistent use of one set of wage principles. The material that has arisen out of this process of discussion and experimentation is of the utmost value to any one endeavoring to work out a wage policy for industrial peace in the United States. It forms a body of doctrines. It gives evidence both as to the chief subjects of wage controversy, and indicates the suitability or the shortcomings of many of the principles or doctrines that might be proposed. Thus in any investigation of principles of wage settlement—with a view to industrial peace—we are not without the guidance of experience.

This experience consists, firstly, of the principles worked out and applied in the decisions and orders of the courts or boards which have served as agents of wage settlement in the United States, England, Canada and the Australian dominions. Of almost equal value is the material growing out of those great industrial conflicts of recent years, in which claims have been put forward and agreement has been sought on the basis of some definite theory of wages. Such, for example, is the material prepared and presented in the course of the railway wage arbitrations in the United States and England. Such also is the evidence and material presented in the course of the inquiry recently held in Great Britain upon the wages of transport workers.

2.—It should be understood that the principles which have been used in wage settlements in the past were not ideal solutions. That is to say they were not arrived at solely by the use of reason, directed to the discovery of what is just and what is for the general good. The situation has been rather that described by Mr. Squires, when he writes: "Too often in the past arbitration has followed the line of least resistance. With much unction, the lion's share has been awarded to the lion. Decisions proposing another settlement were speedily forgotten because not enforced. Those submitting to arbitration frequently did so with the mental reservation that the decision to be acceptable must at least approximate the conditions they felt they would be able to establish by a show of strength. From this position to one of complacent acceptance of arbitrary decisions, applied not to an isolated group but seeking to comprehend all labor or a given class, is a long step for both employers and employees." And again: "In arbitrary wage adjustments the absence of well defined and acceptable standards to be used in wage determination as well as the difficulty in enforcing awards that did not conform closely to the law of supply and demand has forced arbitration to resort to the expediency of splitting the difference. Cost of living, proportionate expense of labor, and net profits, when taken into account have been more often evoked in defense of claims made than as a means of determining what claims were just under the circumstances."[1]

So, also, with any attempt to devise principles which might serve as the basis of a policy of wage settlement in the United States. They would represent the effort to develop standards by which conflicting claims could be resolved. It is not desired to signify agreement by this admission with those who believe that all principles of wage settlement must be purely passive, with those who argue that wage settlement must perforce be nothing more than a recurrent use of expedients produced on the spur of the occasion out of the magical hat of the arbitrator. All that is meant is that no policy of wage settlement will succeed if its results diverge too greatly from the interests which it, in turn, would guide and restrain. Any policy of wage settlement must take into consideration the moral and social circumstances pertinent to the dispute as well as the economic. It must express active social and ethical claims as well as recognize economic facts. It must be supported by the sense that it is at least moderately just.

Most attempts, furthermore, to settle wage disputes by the use of defined principles have resulted in an incoherence of policy due to the necessity of bowing to the facts of force. This interference of force and the consequent disturbance of policy is likewise to be expected in all future attempts. For, in all human affairs private interest will, on favorable occasions, revolt against laws or rules which restrain it.

Again, in the United States all past attempts to settle wage disputes by reference to principles have been isolated and sporadic. They have, therefore, been virtually foredoomed to failure. For as will be made clearer as we progress, any successful attempt to base wage settlements upon principles will demand the consistent and courageous application of these principles for a not inconsiderable period, and to all important industries alike. Otherwise compromise and a search for any way out of the immediate crisis is the only possible principle of settlement. Any well-conceived policy of wage settlement must have regard for a far wider set of forces and facts than are presented by any single controversy. The objects of any policy could only be attained through a long series of decisions ranging throughout the field of industry, and related to each other. This, it is trusted, will become plain as the difficulties of formulating policy are discussed.

3.—Prof. Marshall in his great book has an arresting passage on the importance of the tendency to organization which characterizes the whole field of industry. He writes: "This is not a fitting place for a study of the causes and effects of trade combinations and of alliances and counter alliances among the employers and employed, as well as among traders and manufacturers. They present a succession of picturesque incidents and romantic transformations which arrest public attention and seem to indicate a coming change of our social arrangements now in one direction and now in another; and their importance is certainly great and grows rapidly. But it is apt to be exaggerated; for indeed many of them are little more than eddies such as have always flitted over the surface of progress. And though they are on a larger and more imposing scale in this modern age than before; yet now, as ever, the main body of the movement depends on the deep, silent, strong stream of the tendencies of normal distribution and exchange which 'are not seen' but which control the course of those episodes which 'are seen.' For even in conciliation and arbitration the central difficulty is to discover what is the normal level from which the decisions of the court must not depart far under penalty of destroying their own authority."[2]

Writing in England in 1920, it seems to me as if the events of change in England were more than the surface movements he speaks of, and that slowly but definitely industrial arrangements are undergoing modification so as to give scope to new energies and ideas which will modify the "normal" distribution and exchange as he conceived it. The future in the United States is even less clearly marked. There too new purposes and claims are arising and will seek adjustment with established arrangements.

The attitude of all those who really desire industrial peace must be that of readiness to judge such forces of change as may become active, by the balance of good or harm they seem to promise. For that is the attitude which alone can make possible a fusion of the conservatism of experience and of established interest, and the radicalism of hope and desire—by which fusion society can experience peaceful development.