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THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

By W. J. SMITH
National President, Canadian Brotherhood of Railway,
Transport: and General Workers

» Organized Labour’s attitude toward compulsory
arbitration is well known. We are against it. But
there is more to our opposition than most people
suppose. We are not opposed to arbitration only
because we think it is bad for labour, but because
arbitration would mean the end of genuine collec-
tive bargaining and we would thus be substituting
something that will not work and cannot work for
something that does.

Many people suppose that a strike somehow

represents a failure of the collective bargaining |

process. This is not so. The right
to strike is the very heart of col- |
lective bargaining — as funda-
mental as the employer’s right to
say “no”. There comes a time in
almost every contract dispute
when the word strike is used and
the awareness of what a strike
means is never far from anyone’s
mind. Nobody wants a strike, and
precisely because nobody wants
it, it is the one way of clearing
away the bluff and brag indulged in by both sides
and of bringing the discussion back to reality.

“A matter of opinion”

Now, one of the realities of life in a free econo-
my is that there is no set formula for the estab-
lishment of wages and working conditions. A “fair”
wage is strictly a matter of-opinion and is apt to
vary, depending on whether you are giving it or
getting it. All any of us know is that it is probably
somewhere in between what a wage earner wants

and what his employer wants to pay. Our present

method of handling industrial disputes is possible
because there is a discrepancy between what the
worker wants and is willing to accept, and be-
tween what the employer wants to pay and what

he can pay.

“We narrow down”

Collective bargaining is the method by which

we narrow down and seek to eliminate these dis- _

crepancies — find out what the worker is really
willing to work for and what the employer really
can pay. No one would suggest that an outside
arbiter is in a better position than the employer to
say what he really can pay, or in a better position
than the worker to say what the worker is really
willing to accept. But the advocates of compulsory
arbitration naively suppose that they can eliminate
the strike weapon and that collective bargaining
will go on much as before; that the compromises
made by each side because they fear a strike will
still be made when there is nothing left to fear.
Compulsory arbitration will destroy: genuine
collective bargaining but this is not all; more
needs to be said about the nature of arbitration
and the experience of countries that have tried it.
In Australia, where compulsory arbitration is
in force, the rate of strike losses is many times
higher than in Canada. Compulsory arbitration in
a democratic country cannot be applied ruthlessly
enough to ensure that no strikes take place. The
public will not, fortunately, support ruthless sup-
pression of a strike if it thinks the strikers are
right, even though they are technically lawbreak-
ers. But this is not the sole explanation of Austra-
lia’s unhappy experience with compulsory arbi-

tration.

“Follows the patterns”

Investigations here, in Britain and the United
States, show that arbitrated settlements follow
closely the patterns established in.industries where
workers are free to bargain collectively and to
strike. However, such settlements are in the minor-
ity. When, as in Australia, all disputes are settled
by arbitration, there is no longer a pattern for
arbiters to follow. They must find their own prin-
ciples to serve aS a guide to their decision.

There are no such principles to be found. This

is the crux of the whole question of whether com-

itration is advisable or workable. If
pole: neeaee Ily accepted principles for the
nd working conditions,

then we ought to have compulsory arbitration,
but arbitration operating only within those prin-
ciples. Merely to state the proposition reveals its
impracticability.

But the difficulty of finding generally accepted
principles for the determination of wages does not
spring entirely from differences between labour
and management. Within industry, and within
labour, there are no generally accepted principles
for determining wages. A new firm starting up
has to consider a dozen and one things before
establishing a wage rate for a particular job. The
owners might, for instance, decide that in prin-
ciple they should try to meet the wages of their
competition. But their competition might be a
hundred miles away in a higher (or lower) wage
area. They may possess certain competitive advan-
tages, such as nearness to markets or availability
of materials, etc. The list is almost endless.

“No such formula”

No businessman that I know of would claim
that he had a formula exactly weighted to deal
with all the factors that, even from his point of
view, go into establishing a wage rate. No union
has such a formula either. The advocates of com-
pulsory arbitration are suggesting that these knotty
problems can best be left to a panel of laymen
who, of necessity if they are to be impartial, must
have had no experience with the firm or the union

to change Act

George Burt, Canadian director of the
United Automobile Workers of America,
warned in a letter to Labor Minister Leslie
Rowntree that a strike in the nation’s auto
industry may be necessary to force changes
in the Ontario Labor Relations Act.

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Burt noted that the UAW had been press-
I ing for the right to strike during the life of
| a collective agreement on the question of
| production standards — a right the union
| has in the United States.

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Ontario labor law prohibits strikes dur-
ing the life of an agreement.

“Because of your failure to give us any
relief through legislation, it may be neces-
sary to strike the auto industry,” Burt said
in his letter to the labor minister.

The Ontario Federation of Labor at its
convention in North Bay in October called
for similar changes in the labor code.

The UAW has made greater control over
production standards one of its key targets
in bargaining with the Canadian auto indus-
try’s Big Three.

involved. Small wonder that arbitration has been

a disaster in countries that have tried it.

To summarize, compulsory arbitration is un-
workable because:

e It is assumed that it will deal only with dis-
putes that would otherwise result in strikes
while, in fact, almost all disputes will land with
the arbiters, since arbitration will end the com-
promises that are now made because both sides
fear a strike.

e A ban on all strikes is impossible to enforce.

e There are no generally accepted principles for
arbiters to use in the absence of patterns estab-
lished voluntarily.

Hugh Clegg of Nuffield College, Oxford, has
done a study of compulsory arbitration that con-
cludes as follows:

It may be the duty of the unions to join
with governments and employers to construct
principles for the determination of wages and
conditions of work when conditions make it
possible (for failure so far has not been a fail-
ure only in goodwill) but so long as they can-
not be found and have not been constructed,
arbitration cannot be the panacea to the prob-
lems of industrial relations. Until then it would

RIGHT TO STRIKE ESSENTIAL —

not be a sign of responsibility, as many critics

argue, for ee unions to hand over the final

settlement of all industrial disputes to arbitra-

tors. It would be an act of gross irresponsi-

bility. pit

Support for compulsory arbitration apparently
comes from people who have little idea of what
our system of collective bargaining has accom-
plished. We have said that generally accepted
principles for the determination of wages and
working conditions have not been constructed.
This is true, in the sense that there are no prin-
ciples which are applicable to all situations, but
it would be wrong to leave the impression that
no progress has been made toward the develop-
ment of such principles. Over the years, many
principles have emerged and gained a degree of
acceptance from both management and labour,
The cost of living is a factor that most unions and
most employers agree has relevance in wage dis-
cussions. So have the wages of competing firms,
productivity, location of plant and other factors
almost too numerous to mention. These principles
have emerged as a result of collective bargaining.
When one remembers that, at the beginning of
this century, business held the view that labour
‘was a commodity to be purchased as cheaply as
possible and that labour looked upon itself as the
producer of all wealth, and thus entitled to the
whole value of the product, it is readily discern-
ible that real progress has been made.

“Progress is measurable”

This progress is measurable, despite what the
alarmists would have us believe. Statistics show
that time lost due to strikes as a percentage of
time worked by the whole labour force has de-
clined continuously since the 1920’s despite the
fact that a much higher percentage of the labour
force is now organized. Nor can strikes be re-
garded as a major economic problem. When com-
pared with time lost due to illness, bad weather,
temporary lay-offs or even random absenteeism,
not to mention unemployment, the time lost due
to strikes is negligible.

The inconvenience of strikes is a small price
to pay for the type of social democracy we are
creating. It is a necessary price. Strikes do not
arise except in situations where there is some-

thing to be said for both sides. In such a situation, —

when neither side thinks it can yield, a test of
strength that nobody wants is a sobering influence.
In such an atmosphere, difficulties get down to
bedrock and final bargaining is conducted in an
atmosphere of reality. With compulsory arbitra-
tion, such a stage would never be reached. It
would be too easy for both parties to simply hand
their problem to someone else.

If compulsory arbitration became law tomor-
row, the principles established by 50 years of col-
lective bargaining would be all the arbiters would
have to work with. But free collective bargaining
still has a great contribution to make toward the
establishment of the social principles that will
guide our industrial society. When these principles
have been firmly enough established to make arbi-
tration effective, arbitration will be unnecessary.

Strikes and Lockouts in Canada, 1948-1963

Duration

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Ea a ze
35 ge r=} 8 Hi

et; Es : +
‘S opr

#8 58 3 Exe

5 42,820 885,790 0.10

46,867 1,036,820 0.11

192,083 1,387,500 0.15

102,793 901,620 0.09

112,273 2,765,510 0.29

54,488 1,312,720 0.14

56,630 1,430,300 0.15

60,090 1,875,400 0.19

88,680 1,246,000 0.11

80,695 1,477,100 0.13

111,475 2,816,850 0.25

95,120 2,226,890 0.19

49,408 738,700 0.06

97,959 1,335,080 0.11

74,332 1,417,900 0.11

83,428 917,140 0.07

Source: Strikes and Lockouts in Canada
Economics and Research Branch, e
Canada Department of Labour. ~:cae

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