THE COUNTY COUNCIL AND THE TRADE- I N the debateable land
which separates ethics from political economy, there is no more difficult question than the limits of the obligation of paying a fair wage. The recognition that there is such an obligation has become very much more general of late years,—partly, perhaps, from the fact that the difficulty of assessing it has hitherto deprived this recognition of much of its value. It is safe to preach a duty so long as no one is able to say what constitutes a due discharge of it. But the victory of the Labour party in the London County Council has given the subject a new prominence. Mr. Burns has no doubt what ought to be done, and no doubt what is the proper way of doing it. The motion he has brought forward in the Council assumes that the proper persons to determine what is a fair wage are the workmen employed. There is to be no arbitration, and no appeal. All contractors em- ployed by the County Council are to be compelled to sign a declaration that they pay the wages, work the hours, and observe the conditions recognised by the London Trade- Unions. These wages and hours are to be inserted in a schedule, and any failure to pay and observe them is to be treated as a breach of contract. In a large number of cases, this motion, supposing it to be carried, will have no appreciable effect. It will simply make that law which is now practice. The ordinary wage of a workman is the wage which his Union directs him to ask, and what he asks he has. But in exceptional cases it will have very great effect. It practically closes the free- labour market against contractors employed by the London County Council. In the absence of such a pro- vision as Mr. Burns wishes to see adopted, a contractor might say :—` I consider the wages asked by the Unions un- reasonable, and by the help of a good number of non- unionist labourers, I hope to resist paying them. I am quite willing to insert in the contract what wages I pay, and to leave it to the Council to say whether they are fair. But I refuse to allow a Trade-Union to fix wages at an exorbitant figure, when there are abundance of men outside willing to do the same work at a lower figure.' Mr. Burns would have nothing to say to a contractor of this type. He might be paying his men .23 a week, but if the unionists were asking £3 3s., the Council would have to reject his tender. We know what would be thought of an individual employer who voluntarily submitted to such a regulation as this,—of an employer, that is, who surrendered himself into the hands of his workmen, and left it to them to say what wages he should give them. We should look for his speedy appearance in the list of bankrupts, and feel no great compassion for him when we read his name there. The London County Council, of course, runs no such risk as tine. It may have to pay more for the work it wants done, because, as the contractor must in all cases pay his men at Union rates, he must guard himself, when fixing his prices, against the contingency of these rates being or becoming exorbitant. But to the London County Council, additional outlay is a matter of little moment. It has an inex- haustible fund to draw upon in the rates. The London ratepayer, however, may be pardoned if this prospect fills him with alarm, and if, after the experience of the last County Council election, he feels a well-grounded distrust of his own ability to resist the new imposts which this new source of expenditure may necessitate. Nothing, indeed, could be more straightforward than the language of some of the speakers in Tuesday's debate. The majority of the Council, said Mr. Steadman, owe their seats to the Labour vote, and it is part of the consideration-money that they shall support all measures which the Labour party favours. And Mr. Saunders ingenuously admitted that his object in voting for the motion was to help on a general rise of wages throughout the country. In view of these statements, we ought perhaps to be astonished at Mr. Burns's moderation. Why has he not proposed that all contractors shall be compelled to sign a declaration that they will pay double the Trade-Union rate of wages ? The gratitude of the members of the County Council to the Labour party would thus be shown in a far more con- spicuous fashion than by Mr. Burns's half-hearted motion, and the process of raising wages would go on much more briskly.
The division on Tuesday was on an amendment to refer the whole question to a special committee, which was rejected by 55 votes to 52. The Labour party in the Council think that the time for inquiry has passed, and that time for action has come. Next week, a decision will be taken on another aspect of the question. The Council does not, or need not, give all its work to London con- tractors. There are some things that can be done equally well by country workmen ; and if so, they can usually be done more cheaply. Mr. Costelloe proposes to meet this contingency by making the rate of wages recognised by the local Trade-Union the standard which all contractors are to follow. The principle of this amendment is identical with that of Mr. Burns's motion. The workmen are equally left to fix their own pay without arbitration, and without appeal. Nor can we believe that it will make much difference to the ratepayer which of the two is adopted. The influence of the London Labour party will probably be strong enough to ensure that the Council will always employ London contractors, if the only reason for giving the preference to country contractors is that the wages paid by them are lower. Indeed, we are inclined to think that, of the two, the London Unions are more likely to be reasonable than those in the country, and that if the Council were habitually to give their work to country contractors, the country Unions would take advan- tage of this practice to bring the wages up to the London scale. In doing this, they would certainly have the approval of Mr. Burns. He is far from being satisfied with the Unions as they are. In nine cases out of ten, he thinks, they are too moderate, too reactionary, too much inclined to compromise and agree with the masters. If this is the impression made on Mr. Burns's mind by such incidents as the Durham strike, it is quite a concession that he should be willing to leave the regulation of wages in the hands of an authority which always errs on the side of conciliation. Our difficulty in the matter is that we cannot recognise the Unions as we know them in Mr. Burns's picture. We have never disputed the justice of the claim they make to put up the rate of wages to the highest point which em- ployers can afford to pay. In that higgling of the market which at present seems the only process by which this point can be ascertained, the Unions are an indispensable factor. But the employers are an equally indispensable factor; and it is not consistent with this view that they should lay down their arms and invite the Unions to declare what profit they ought to be content with, and what wages they can pay and yet make that profit. Workmen and employers are alike necessary to the solu- tion of the wages equation, and it is not to the ultimate interest of the workmen that this should be forgotten. But if the London County Council act as Mr. Burns asks them to act, it will be forgotten. The Council is already a large employer of labour, and. it is likely in the future to be a larger employer still. Yet, if Mr. Burns's motion is carried—or Mr. Costelloe's amendment either, for the matter of that—the Council, in its character of employer, will renounce all right to have a voice in fixing the rate of wages. Moreover, it will make this renunciation without fear of consequences. Other employers are kept straight by the knowledge that if they concede too much, they will be ruined; the County Council will know that the worst that can befall them is having to levy a larger rate. This cheerful acceptance of any terms that the Unions may think fit to demand, will naturally encourage the Unions to ask more than they would otherwise think wise. To have one large employer always willing to pay any wages that may be asked, must for a time make the position of other employers materially weaker. It cannot, indeed, influence the ultimate course of events, because individual employers will not, in the long-run, con- sent to work at a loss because a corporate employer who has no personal interest in the matter, does so with a light heart. But for a time, the existence of a corporate employer who is thus minded will prevent wages from finding their natural level, and so injure, not employers only, but that very Labour party at whose bidding the London County Council will have acted. The regular action of a clock is not promoted by relieving the pendulum of the check supplied by the weights, and the interests of the wage-receiver will not in the end be consulted by depriving the wage-payer of a voice in the determination of the sum he ought to pay.
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