THE FRENCH CHAMBER'S ATTACK ON EMPLOYERS. T HE Labour Question in
France is entering upon a new phase. It is only within the last seven years that Trade-Unions have been recognised, and they are already claiming a position, not of equality, but of supremacy. In 1884, "professional syndicates" were for the first time made legal. A statute of that year allows workmen or employers to form themselves into Unions "for the study and defence of their interests." The law which regulates associations is stricter in France than in England, and without this distinct permission such Unions might have been dissolved at the pleasure of the Executive. The workmen, or their Parliamentary advocates, now com- plain that this law has been left without a sanction. It lays down that certain things must be done or not done, but it fixes no penalties for not doing or doing them. It is the object of a Bill now before the Chambers to make good this defect.
The way in which it sets about its work is this. It pro- hibits, under penalty of imprisonment for one to three months, and a fine of .24 to „t80, any interference with liberty of association, by way, among others, of threats of dismissal or refusal to give work, collective discharge of unionist workmen, or offers or promises of employment. The general debate on the Bill took place on Monday, and M. Aynard, a Southern Deputy, made a maiden speech against it which seems to have been a remarkable success. Other speakers characterised it as a declara- tion of war against employers,—a description which M. Clemenceau accepted. War, he maintained, had been already declared by employers, and the Bill would only give to workmen the necessary means of defending them- selves. The Minister of Justice tried to steer a middle course between these two views. A law was wanted, but the particular law proposed was obscure and contradictory. By 410 votes against 106, the Chamber adopted this view, and referred the Bill to a Committee in order to have the ambiguities of which M. Fallieres complained, properly cleared up. No change, however, was introduced by the Com- mittee which affected the substance of the Bill. As it came back to the Chamber the following day, it was in all essen- tials what it left the Chamber on the Monday. An employer who has quarrelled with a Trade-Union will still find his hands tied behind him. He cannot resort to a lock-out, for he must not dismiss his workmen on the ground of their membership of the Union. He cannot employ other men in the place of those who have struck, because to do so is to attack liberty of association by means of offers of work. To this extraordinary clause an amendment was moved limiting penal interferences with Trade-Unions to overt acts of violence or bribery. But the Chamber would not listen to anything so rational. It rejected the amend- ment by 300 votes against 226, adopted the first clause of the Bill by 347 votes to 150, and finally passed the Bill itself without a division.
While professing to make liberty of association secure, this Bill really makes it one-sided. Employers are not only forbidden to protect themselves by combination ; they must not even protect themselves individually. The working of the law cannot be better shown than by reference to a recent trade quarrel in England. Had such a law existed here, the South Metropolitan Gas Company would have been at the mercy of their stokers. When the men threw up their work, the only means of defence the Company possessed was the employment of non- unionists. Here,' they said, are places left vacant by the action of the Gas Stokers' Union; will you come and fill them ? ' The offer was made unusually tempting, and men came in in abundance. But the law just adopted by the Chamber of Deputies would have punished this move on the part of the Company with fine and imprisonment. Mr. Livesey and his brother-directors would have been guilty of interference with liberty of association by offers or promises of employment. The only choice left open to them would have been between instant surrender and retirement from business. Even in France it is not yet proposed to make the latter course penal ; but unless the South Metropolitan Gas Company had been prepared to wind up their concern, they -mist have submitted to whatever terms the men chose to offer. To call such a law as this a law protecting liberty of association, is an abuse of language. Workmen are to be free to choose their own masters, but masters are not to be free to choose their own workmen. An employer who has quarrelled with a Trade-Union is forbidden to use the only weapon that can be of any use to him. He may argue with those men who have left his service, he may entreat them to return, he may propose conditions of com- promise. But if the men are deaf alike to his reasons, his entreaties, and his proposals, he can do no more. He must take them back and give them what they ask, or he must close his works. Non-unionist workmen may be crowding round his doors, but he must not lift his finger in the way of invitation to come in. Freedom of associa- tion, as thus interpreted, has killed freedom of contract. The master who has once had unionists in his service must never employ any one else. The Unions are masters of the situation, and all he has to consider is whether he shall buy labour at their price, or be content not to buy it at all.
Nor is it only the employers whom this law deprives of their freedom. It presents association to the workman as the Jacobin presented fraternity to the citizen. "Be my brother, or I will kill thee," has its exact parallel in "Be a unionist, or you shall have no work." It is assumed that the advantages of association will not be so obvious as to induce every workman to become a member of a Union. The authors of the Bill foresee that there will always be causes in operation which will disincline a certain number of workmen to take this step. Eccen- tricity, dislike of dictation, the belief that they can do better for themselves alone than in a Society, these and similar motives will, if they are allowed to work freely, be strong enough to divide workmen into unionists and non- unionists. Consequently, they must not be allowed to work freely. The cause of Unionism is too sacred to be left to chance, to the degree of success it may attain in inducing men to become unionists of their own free will. They must have some effectual pressure applied to them ; and what pressure can be so effectual as the knowledge that no employer will be allowed to take on non-unionists, if unionists refuse to work except on extravagant conditions ? Legislation conceived in this spirit is not likely to stop short at making a non-unionist's position disadvantageous ; it will probably go on to make it impossible. From prohibiting the employment of non-unionists in the case of a dispute between em- ployer and workman, it is an easy step to prohibiting it altogether. On the theory which has found favour with the French Chamber, the worst assault that can be com- mitted against liberty of association is to decline to associate, and the most effectual way of preventing such assaults is to make applications for work unlawful, except when made by members of a Union. Thus the new French legislation will be quite as injurious to workmen, sup- posing them not to be unionists, as it can be to employers.
As the Bill has to come before the Chamber again, and, if carried there, has to be dealt with by the Senate, it is possible that it will not pass after all. It seems unlikely, however, that the Chamber, after going so far in the direction of concession to the workmen, will now draw back, aud the Senate, though it will be more disposed to side with the employers, may not be willing to take on itself the invidious task of doing them justice. The vote of the Chamber is probably due to the same sense of alarm as that which prompted the German Emperor to take up the Labour Question. The proletariat is a source of vague terror alike to Sovereigns and Legislatures. But the German Emperor seems to have grasped what the French Chamber has not,—that concession is only safe when it rests on defined principles, and is protected by adequate resolution. The French Deputies will have to learn this before they are quit of the labour difficulty, but as yet their education is all to come.
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