Criticism of Trade Boards has fastened on their power to determine
higher rates of wages for skilled workers, one of the additional powers
that they secured under the Act of 1918. There are many who agree that a
bare minimum should be fixed by a statutory authority with legal powers,
but think that this should be the beginning and end of law's
interference. As to this, it must be said, first, that the wide margin
between a subsistence wage and a human needs wage, brought out by Mr.
Rowntree's calculations, shows that there can be no question at present
of a single minimum. To give the "human needs" figure legislative
sanction would at present be Utopian. Very few Trade Boards ventured so
far even when trade was booming. The Boards move in the region between
bare subsistence and "human needs," as trade conditions allow, and can
secure a better figure for some classes of their clients when they
cannot secure it for all. They therefore need all the elasticity which
the present law gives them.
On the other hand, it is contended with some force by the Cave Committee
that it is improper for appointed members to decide questions of
relatively high wages for skilled men or for the law to enforce such
wages by criminal proceedings, and the Committee accordingly propose to
differentiate between higher and lower minima both as regards the method
of determination and of enforcement. I have not time here to discuss the
details of their proposal, but I wish to say a word on the retention--if
in some altered shape--of the powers given by the Act of 1918. The Trade
Board system has been remarkable for the development of understanding
and co-operation between representatives of employers and workers.
Particularly in the work of the administrative committees, matters of
detail which might easily excite controversy and passion are habitually
handled with coolness and good sense in the common interest of the
trade. A number of the employers have not merely acquiesced in the
system, but have become its convinced supporters, and this attitude
would be more common if certain irritating causes of friction were
removed. The employer who desires to treat his workers well and maintain
good conditions is relieved from the competition of rivals who care
little for these things, and what he is chiefly concerned about is
simplicity of rules and rigid universality of enforcement. It is this
section of employers who have prevented the crippling of the Boards in a
time of general reaction. It is blindness to refuse to see in such
co-operation a possible basis of industrial peace, and those were right
who in 1918 saw in the mechanism of the Boards the possibility, not
merely of preventing industrial oppression and securing a minimum living
wage, but of advancing to a general regulation of industrial relations.
At that time it was thought that the whole of industry might be divided
between Trade Boards and Whitley Councils, the former for the less, the
latter for the more organised trades. In the result the Whitley Councils
have proved to be hampered if not paralysed by the lack of an
independent element and of compulsory powers.