The Theory and Policy of Labour Protection Part 5

III. ORGANISATION OF LABOUR PROTECTION.

1. Courts by which it is administered:

_A._ Protection by the ordinary administrative bodies--

Police, Magistrates, Church and School authorities, Military and Naval authorities.

_B._ Protection by specially const.i.tuted bodies,

1. Governmental:

_a._ Administrative:

Industrial Inspectorates (including mining experts), "Labour-Boards,"

Special organs: local, district, provincial, and imperial;

_b._ Judicial:

Judicial Courts, Courts of Arbitration.

2. Representative: (trade-organisations):

"Labour-Chambers,"

"Labour Councillors,"

Councils composed of the oldest representatives of the trade, Labour-councils: local, district, provincial, and imperial.

II. METHODS OF ADMINISTRATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS.

_a._ Methods:

Hearing of Special Appeals, Granting periods of exemption, Fixing of times, Regulating of fines, Application of money collected in fines, etc.

_b._ Records:

Factory-regulations, Certificates of health, Factory-list of children employed, Official overtime list, Labour log-book, Inspector's report (with compulsory-publication and international exchange), International collection of statistics and information relating to protective legislation and industrial regulations.

The foregoing survey may be held to contain all that is included under Labour Protection, actual or proposed. But of the measures included within these limits not all are as yet in operation; and the actual conditions are different in the various countries.

With regard to the scope of protection, those measures affecting married women, home-industrial work, work in trade and carrying industries, are still specially incomplete.

With regard to the organs of administration of Labour Protection, one kind, viz. the representative, has at present no existence except in the many proposals and suggestions made as to them; this however does not preclude the possibility that in the course of a generation or so a rich crop of such organs may spring up. It is not improbable that special representative bodies ("labour-councils")--after the pattern of chambers of commerce and railway-boards, etc.--and "labour-boards" may develop and form a complete network over the country. Perhaps the separate representative and executive organs may be able to amalgamate the various branches of aids to labour, forming separate sections for Labour Protection, Labour Insurance, industrial hygiene and statistics, with equal representation of the administrative, judicial, technical and statistical elements; and thus the ordinary administration service may be freed from the burden of the special services which a constructive social policy demands.

Again, the organisation of protection is not by any means the same everywhere.

According to the foregoing cla.s.sification (III. 1), the duties of carrying out Labour Protection are divided between the ordinary and extraordinary judicial and administrative authorities. The arrangements, however, are very different in different countries. Such countries as have not a complete system of authorised administrative boards and petty courts of justice, will avail themselves more freely of the special organs, particularly of the industrial inspectors, than will those countries with administrative systems like those of Germany and Austria; in comparing the spheres of operation of inspectors in various countries, one must not overlook the differences in the action of the ordinary administrative organs. Moreover, all civilized countries already possess special organs of protection, and it follows in the natural course of development of all administrative organisation, that the special administrative and judicial legislation which is springing up and increasing should possess special judicial and administrative courts, so soon as need for such may arise from the necessity for a wider application of special law in the life of the citizen.

Finally, we must guard against a further misconception. Neither labour-boards nor labour-chambers must be confounded with those voluntary representative cla.s.s organisations, and joint committees in which both cla.s.ses meet together for Labour Protection, and for objects quite outside the sphere of Labour Protection. The labour-boards indicated would be special organs of a public nature, regulated by the State; labour-chambers would also be organs recognised and regulated by the State, working in consultation with the labour-boards, and exercising control over the labour-boards. The voluntary organs of a.s.sociation, on the other hand, with their secretaries and joint committees, are free representative, executive, and arbitrative organs of both cla.s.ses. A distinction must be drawn between the public and voluntary organs. It is of course not impossible in all cases that the free "labour-chambers," in their ordinary and special meetings might exercise extraordinary powers, besides acting as regular and general organs of conciliation and arbitration. The Unions and other trade organisations of to-day can in their present form hardly be regarded as the last word in the history of labour organisation.

In the second chapter we had to guard against the error of looking on Labour Protection merely as factory protection, and protection of women and juvenile workers; we must with equal insistence draw attention to the fact that Labour Protection is not confined in its scope to protection of employment, or in its organisation to the machinery of industrial inspection. This will be shown in Chapters IV. to VIII.

The foregoing survey of the existing conditions and tendencies of Labour Protection makes it clear that Labour Protection in scope, legislative methods, and organisation, is only a means of supplementing and supporting in a special manner the already long established forms of State protection of labour (in the widest sense), and the still older forms of non-governmental Labour Protection (in its widest sense) the necessity for which arises from the special modern developments of industry.

Labour Protection equally with compulsory insurance, from which it is however quite distinct, does not preclude the voluntary efforts which are made in addition to legal measures, nor the help rendered by savings-banks, by private liberality and benevolence, by family help, and by various munic.i.p.al and state charitable inst.i.tutions; and it does not render unnecessary the exercise of the ordinary administration, and the co-operation of the latter in the work of establishing security of labour. The general impression derived from a study of this survey will be confirmed if we further examine into the scope, legislative methods, and organisation of the separate measures of Labour Protection, in addition to the cla.s.sification of industrial wage-labour, as dealt with by protective legislation, which I attempted in Chapter II., and if we bear in mind the great differences in the degree of protection extended to the separate cla.s.ses of protected workers.

CHAPTER IV.

MAXIMUM WORKING-DAY.

In considering the question of protection of employment, we must first touch upon the restrictions of employment. These restrictions are directed to granting short periods of intermission of work, _i.e._ to the regulation of hours of rest, of holidays, night-rest and meal-times; also to the regulation of the maximum duration of the daily working-time, inclusive of intervals of rest, _i.e._ to protection of hours of labour.

Protection of times of rest, and protection of working-time, are both based on the same grounds. It is to the interest of the employer to make uninterrupted use of his business establishment and capital, and therefore to force the wage-worker to work for as long a time and with as little intermission as possible. The excessive hours of labour first became an industrial evil through the increasing use of fixed capital, especially with the immense growth of machinery; partly this took the form of all-day and all-night labour, even in cases where this was not technically necessary, and partly of shortening the holiday rest and limiting the daily intervals of rest; but more than all it came through the undue extension of the day's work by the curtailment of leisure hours. Moral influence and custom no longer sufficed to check the treatment of the labourer as a mere part of the machinery, or to prevent the destruction of his family life. A special measure of State protection for the regulation of hours of labour was therefore indispensable.

Protection of the hours of labour is enforced indirectly by regulating the periods of intermission of labour: meal-times, night work, and holidays. But it may be also completed and enforced directly by fixing the limits of the maximum legal duration of working-hours within the astronomical day. This is what we mean by the maximum working-day.

The maximum working-day is computed sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Directly, when the same maximum total number of hours is fixed for each day (with the exception it may be of Sat.u.r.day); indirectly, when the maximum total of working-hours is determined, _i.e._ when a weekly average working-day is appointed.

The latter regulation is in force in England, where 56 hours are fixed for textile factories (less half an hour for cleaning purposes), and sixty hours (or in some cases fifty-nine hours) for other factories. In Germany and elsewhere the direct appointment of the maximum working-day is more usual: except in the _von Berlepsch_ Bill (-- 139_a_, 3) where provision is made for the indirect regulation of the maximum working-day, by the following clause: "exceptions to the maximum working-day for children and young persons may be permitted in spinning houses and factories in which fires must be kept up without intermission, or in which for other reasons connected with the nature of the business day and night work is necessary, and in those factories and workshops the business of which does not admit of the regular division of labour into stated periods, or in which, from the nature of the employment, business is confined to a certain season of the year; but in such cases the work-time shall not exceed 36 hours in the week for children, and 60 hours for young persons (in spinning houses 64, in brick-kilns 69 hours)."

1. _Meaning of maximum working-day in the customary use of the term._

In the existing labour protective legislation, and in the impending demands for Labour Protection, the maximum working-day is variously enforced, regulated and applied. In order to arrive at a clear understanding of the matter it will be necessary to examine the various meanings attached by common use to the term working-day.

Let us take first the different methods of enforcement.

It is enforced either by contract and custom, or by enactment and regulation. Hence a distinction must be drawn between the maximum working-day of contract and the legal (regulated) working-day.

Now-a-days when we speak of the maximum working-day we practically have in mind the legal working-day. But it must not be forgotten that the maximum duration of labour has long been regulated by custom and contract in whole branches of industry, and that the maximum working-day of contract has paved the way for the progressive shortening of the legal maximum working-day.

Even the party who are now demanding a general eight hours maximum working-day desire to preserve the right of a still further shortening of hours by contract, generally, or with regard to certain specified branches of industry; the Auer Motion (-- 106) runs thus: "The possibility of fixing a still shorter labour-day shall be left to the voluntary agreement of the contracting parties."

Certainly no objection can be raised to making provision for the maintenance of freedom of contract with regard to shortening the duration of daily labour. The right to demand such freedom in contracting, is, in my opinion, incontrovertible.

Next we come to the various modes of regulating the maximum working-day.

It may either be fixed uniformly for all nations as the regular working-day for all protected labour, or it may be specially regulated for each industry in which wage-labour is protected; or else a regular maximum working-day may be appointed for general application, with special arrangements for certain industries or kinds of occupation. This would give us either a regular national working-day, or a system of special maximum working-days, or a regular general working-day with exceptions for special working days.

The system of special working-days has long since come into operation, although to a more or less limited degree, by the action of custom and contract. The penultimate paragraph of -- 120 of the _von Berlepsch_ Bill, admits the same system--of course only for hygienic purposes--in the following provision: "The duration of daily work permissible, and the intervals to be granted, shall be prescribed by order of the Bundesrath (Federal Council) in those industries in which the health of the worker would be endangered by a prolonged working-day."

The mixed system would no doubt still obtain even were the regular working-day more generally applied, since there will always be certain industries in which a specially short working-day will be necessary (in smelting houses and the like).