English Law and Labor Unions
Somerville, Henry
THE Trade Disputes and Trade Unions bill now before Parliament is a Conservative government's reaction to the general strike of last year. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald in New York described the bill as...
...The reader will recognize that what is at issue under Clause One is the question of sympathetic strikes...
...and it is further declared that it is illegal to commence or continue or to apply any sums in furtherance or support of any such strike...
...To come under the designation of illegality, a strike must be undertaken for some purpose other than the furthering of a trade dispute in the strikers' own trade or industry, and it must be designed or calculated to coerce the government, either directly or by inflicting hardship on the community...
...Very few of the larger industrial corporations are really independent in any true sense of the word, for besides being united into many powerful combinations, such as partnerships, combinations, trusts, etc., of various kinds, with their related and interwoven interests, the great majority of the great industrial and commercial corporations of this country [the United States] have united in such associations as the National Manufacturers' Association, the National Erectors' Association, etc., with the purpose of assisting one another financially, as well as by moral and economic pressure, in resisting the demands of labor...
...Do electricians working for railway companies belong to the railway industry or the electrical industry...
...His drift may be gathered from the following extract: While we should not seek lightly to justify any extension of the sympathetic strike principle, yet it would seem that there is greater justification for this second type of sympathetic strike than is generally conceded...
...He is so Catholicminded that rumors are always recurring of his reception into the Church...
...The influence of the ideas of his school is seen in Sir Henry's favorite objection to the bill...
...The view has been forced upon me that if strikes are to be conducted effectively it is vain to hope that ethical restrictions will be kept in mind by the combatants...
...Pressure on the government was attempted by inflicting hardship on the community, as by the stopping of transportation of all kinds...
...Apart from this bill it would appear to be doubtful whether, except in cases of breach of contract, any strike is illegal in England...
...It would seem that all the railways in the country can be stopped because of a dispute about the terms of employment of one railway servant...
...Then, again, just as the relations of capitalism and employers and employers' federations are so intimate, so interlocked today, so are the relations of the various trade unions, and it is an utter impossibility to confine a trade dispute to what is described in this bill as within a trade or industry...
...But considered in itself, it would not suggest to a detached observer that it could produce constitutional or legal results commensurate with the party excitement it is now generating...
...This is all perfectly moral and legal frightfulness, and it does not add much to the sum total of terrorism if a "blackleg" is told he will get his head punched...
...Macdonald was a sick man and his language presumably reflected his own overstrain, but all the Labor critics of the bill are speaking in like terms, and the Labor party has formally given notice that its first act on returning to office will be the repeal of the measure...
...Civil servants may not belong to any labor union which is not composed exclusively of civil servants, and the unions of civil servants may not be federated or connected with non-civil service unions...
...The "something" might have taken the form of a renewal of the subsidy in aid of miners' wages...
...A strike remains legal even though it be designed or calculated to coerce the government either directly or by inflicting hardship upon the community, provided that the strikers are furthering a trade dispute within their own trade or industry...
...Snowden himself is disposed to admit, that strikes, on the whole, have not been of benefit to the workers...
...Catholic moralists have not reached agreement on the ethics of the sympathetic strike...
...Breaches of contract apart, all grades in the postoffice could strike in support of the demands of one grade...
...The real Labor men have no use for this trifling...
...Snowden says, to increase the pressure, to increase coercion...
...In the House of Commons debates there has been a good deal of dialectic fencing remote from any real issue...
...The fullest and best discussion I know of is in a book entitled The Morality of the Strike, by Reverend D. A. McLean (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons) with a commendatory introduction from the authoritative pen of Dr...
...It may be used by the employers on the workers...
...Again, electricians supply light and heat to private houses, and power to all manner of business establishments...
...Belloc and Mr...
...The pivot of the bill is in the first portion of Clause One, which, as amended by the government, runs: It is hereby declared that any strike is illegal if it has any object besides the furtherance of a trade dispute within the trade or industry in which the strikers are engaged, and is a strike designed or calculated to coerce the government either directly or by inflicting hardship upon the community...
...Intimidation is of the very essence of the "furtherance of a trade dispute," as the bill puts it...
...Are they prohibited from cutting off supplies to a "blackleg" shop when by doing so they incidentally stop supplies to innocent non-combatants ? How will the judges define a "trade or industry" within the meaning of the Act...
...This general strike affords a large-scale example of the kind of action that the bill declares illegal...
...Even under this bill no strike is illegal if it is in furtherance of a trade dispute within the trade or industry in which the strikers are engaged, A trade dispute is one which is connected with the terms of employment or with the conditions of labor...
...The defenders of the bill regard the objection as pedantic, because cessation of labor is prohibited only when such cessation is calculated to inflict hardship on the community and to exercise coercion upon the government in a matter not particularly affecting the workers in question...
...Workers who refuse to take part in an illegal strike are protected against being penalized for such refusal by their labor unions...
...Not all such strikes are prohibited...
...Chesterton...
...But can road transport be stopped because of a rail dispute...
...The essential purpose of a strike is to coerce somebody...
...He is an enthusiast for mediaevalism, and though he belongs to a party which is nominally socialist, he is counted among the distributist school of Mr...
...This conclusion is strengthened by the consideration, which Mr...
...but it is always coercive...
...The policy of unions in a strike must be, as Mr...
...The remark serves to show that the Labor opponents of the bill are not moved by a desire for a repetition of last year's occurrence...
...Car lapermakers stop the supply of paper to a printi: j firm which has a dispute with its compositors...
...It is a resort to force—the use of force to compel the concession of something...
...We now return to the pivotal Clause One...
...They know that striking is a dirty game and that it has to be played to win...
...John A. Ryan...
...Sir Henry Slesser, attorney-general in the Labor government, arguing against the bill as going much further than the prohibition of general strikes, says that there is not the slightest chance of a general strike happening again for generations...
...Picketing" during a strike (this refers, of course, to legal strikes) must not be conducted in such a way as to cause obstruction at the approach or egress of a worker's home or place of employment, or to "intimidate" the worker, intimidation being defined as the causing of reasonable apprehension not merely of physical or material injury but of boycott or loss of any kind, or of exposure to hatred, ridicule or contempt...
...An employer is frightening his men with the loss of their jobs...
...Lockouts are declared illegal in the same terms and in the same circumstances as render strikes illegal...
...Philip Snowden put the realistic Labor view very plainly when he made the following remarks in the House of Commons: What is, in essence, the purpose of a strike...
...Ramsay Macdonald in New York described the bill as "the most iniquitous piece of class legislation produced by blind and stupid people," and declared that the government which proposed it deserved to be impeached...
...He argues that, inasmuch as it prohibits the cessation of labor in certain circumstances even after the workers have terminated their contracts, it reintroduces legal servitude for the workers...
...Its object was to force the government to do something for the miners...
...This declaration ensures that the bill will be a leading issue at the next general election, and as the fate of parties depends upon it, it is of first-class political importance...
...Father McLean discusses the morality of the sympathetic strike (a) against the same employer and (b) against different employers...
...I speak as one who knows industrial warfare at first hand and who has studied the rules of the moralists concerning strikes...
...Local authorities are forbidden to make it a condition of employment that their workers shall belong or not belong to a labor union...
...If the right is taken away from the trade unions to increase the pressure, to increase coercion by sympathetic strikes, then the strike weapon becomes absolutely useless...
...The men are frightening him with the loss of his business...
...As things are, with the worker at a natural disadvantage against the employer, it is mockery to tell the worker that he has a right to strike, but only under such restrictions as will ensure his defeat...
...Any amount of sympathetic striking against one employer remains legal...
...Unions may not levy their members for political funds except in the case of members who have signed a formal expression of willingness to contribute...
...The general strike of last year was a sympathy strike...
...Sir Henry Slesser is a philosophic lawyer whose convictions should be of special interest to Catholics...
...But until the workers see some other way of defending themselves against capital, they will surrender no weapons they deem necessary to an effective strike...
...The legal friends of Labor have been disposed to minimize the extent of sympathetic strikes and to throw doubt on the evidence of intimidation practised during trade disputes...
...Strikes are like war, and the more hopeful line of policy is to work for means of preventing them by providing some alternative instead of merely regulating them...
...The same is to be said of extending the strike against all employers in a particular trade or industry...
...It can have no other object...
...it may be used by the workmen upon the employers...
...Before commenting on this pivotal clause, I may briefly summarize the other provisions of the bill...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 7
