tures of New York, Wisconsin, and California, but it was not until the upheaval in Colorado in 1914-1915 that a law was actually passed in the United States embodying restrictions on change of terms and on strikes and lockouts.

1

The law of 1915 gives to the Industrial Commission of Colorado, among its other powers, the power to compel a hearing in the case of an industrial dispute, and to deliver an award, which, like those under the Canadian act, is not mandatory. As in the Canadian act, change of terms of employment, strikes, and lockouts are prohibited until after thirty days' notice and until after a hearing and award if such hearing is started within the time of notice. Going beyond the Canadian act, which is limited to public utilities and mines, the Colorado law covers all employees except. those in domestic service, in agriculture, and in establishments employing less than four hands. The law was first invoked 2 when a large cracker company announced a decrease of wages to take effect the following week. Some of the employees struck and the commission ordered the employers to submit their proposed reduction to the commission and the employees to resume work. Both sides obeyed." "No longer is a strike a private affair," was the editorial comment in a prominent Denver paper.*

4. UNIONS OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

With the broadening scope of the state as an industrial employer, the collective bargain is, in some cases, entered upon even by the government with its employees. Here it presents a peculiar problem. The state employs permanently larger bodies of workers than any other single employer. It is not

Rocky Mountain News, August 10, 1915.

Ibid., August 11, 1915.

Meaning the governmental unit, national, state or municipal.

The United States government on June 30, 1914, had in its employ 482,721 persons (United States Civil Service Commission, Report, 1915, p. 6), approximately the same number as employed in the entire iron and steel industry in the United States. To this number should be added the employees of state and local governments.

subject to the competition that limits the private employer in his bargain with labor, and it is the medium through which the employee with the suffrage becomes in a measure his own employer. In such states as allow practically universal suffrage it then seems less necessary for the public employee to use the weapon of strike or boycott employed by the private worker in his struggle for better wages and working conditions.

(1) Recognition of Unions

The right of the public employee to strike is not conceded by government, although in many countries the right of government workers to organize is not denied them. Russia,1 Turkey, and Roumania3 forbid concerted action on the part of government employees under penalty, and even in republican France public strikes are forbidden and punished, while the right of public employees to organize is at least doubtful and certainly restricted. Even in the United Kingdom, in Australasia and the United States, where government employees are nominally allowed to combine, trade unionism among public employees is not freely tolerated, there being still a general sentiment that opposition of public employees to the government savors strongly of insubordination and unpatriotism. This feeling is especially strong in France, where unionism has come to be regarded as a real danger, due largely to the great postal and railway strikes. At the same time 'Imperial ukase of December, 1905 (Bulletin of the International Labor Office, Vol. I, 1906, p. 51).

2 Act of November 6, 1908 (Ibid., Vol. III, 1908, p. 331).

3 Decree of December 19, 1909 (Ibid., Vol. V, 1910, p. 437). 'Order of March 18, 1909, relating to the organization of disciplinary committees of the outdoor staffs of the postal and telegraph service, providing penalties for "collective or concerted refusal" on the part of the staff. (Ibid., Vol. IV, 1909, p. 293.)

The minister of public education maintained in 1912 that under the law of 1884, which gave legal standing to labor unions, syndicates of teachers were not recognized, and such a syndicate was dissolved by the French government. See American Federationist, February, 1913, p. 136. New Statesman, May 8, 1915, special supplement on 'State and Municipal Enterprise," p. 22.

'An account of the postal strike and its cause may be found in J. H. Harley, New Social Democracy, 1911, pp. 122-143. Also see Graham Taylor, "Unionizing Government Employees," The Survey, May 8, 1909, p. 226.

the feeling of the employees, as expressed in the international conference of public employees (August, 1907), is that the employee, even on public works, has a right to organize and strike as a means of obtaining desired concessions as to conditions of employment. In the United States, in 1902, the President by executive order, amended in 1906, forbade all government employees directly or indirectly to solicit an increase of pay or to influence legislation in their behalf, save through the heads of departments in which they served. The protest of the unions2 led to the act of 1912, adopted as a rider to the Post Office appropriation act,3 which permits post office employees to petition Congress, but forbids them to affiliate with any outside organization which imposes upon them an obligation to strike, or purposes to assist them in any strike against the government. The executive order applies only to the activities of unions of public employees influencing Congress. It does not prevent organizations within the department nor collective bargaining with the department. Such collective bargaining exists in a crude form in departments requiring skilled labor, and, in the case of the War Department, a complete scheme of arbitration has been worked out for the arsenal at Watertown, Mass., for all mechanical employees. This provides for a mediation board of an equal number of members elected by the employees and officers appointed by the commanding officer. There is a supreme Mediation Board at Washington, including representatives of the national unions to which the arsenal workers belong, and officers appointed by the Chief of Ordnance. Appeal lies to the Secretary of War. A similar arrangement had been worked out in the street-cleaning department of New York in 1896.6

Other governments have found it necessary to adopt forms

1 United States Department of Labor, Bulletin No. 88, May, 1910, p. 867. 2 See American Federationist, January, 1915, p. 28; also January, 1912, p. 36; January, 1914, p. 51.

Congressional Record, Vol. XLVIII, 1912, p. 11819.

United States, Laws 1912, C. 389, Sec. 6.

See O. O. 10225/582, "Instructions in regard to Hearings of Grievances, issued January 9, 1915, by the Chief of Ordnance to the Commanding Officer, Watertown Arsenal."

See Commons, Labor and Administration, 1913, pp. 108-113.

of collective bargaining with employees. In New Zealand the act of 19081 provides that any society of railway employees may register and become officially recognized by the govern

It may then enter into an "industrial agreement" with the minister of railways and, by registration, the articles of agreement are brought under government enforcement. Any appeal goes before the court of arbitration, consisting of a judge and representatives of the government and employees. After a hearing the award takes the form of a new compulsory agreement or an enforcement of the old. There are appeal boards for postal and telegraph employees,2 tramway employees, and for public-school teachers; and any ten or more teachers may organize a society, which, like the railway organization, registers and has corporate existence.1

3

The French plan for railway administration does not recognize an employees' union as such, but goes farther than the New Zealand scheme in arranging for cooperation between government and employees. Officials and workers are represented on the various committees by their chosen delegates. Thus, in the councils and grades committee they help prepare reports and lists of premiums and promotions. As delegates they are part of the council of inquiry whose duty it is to express an opinion on all important questions of discipline submitted by the general manager.5 In addition there are the representative district councils, which act as buffers between the railway administration and the employees, make explanations, and administer necessary reprimands. Officials no longer reprimand workmen. Above the district councils is the Conseil de Reseau, the supreme advisory board of the whole state railway system. Of the twenty-one members

1 Bulletin of the International Labor Office, Vol. III, 1908, p. 312.

2 Act of October 24, 1894. New Zealand Statutes, 1894, post and telegraph department act.

An act to amend the tramways act, 1908, New Zealand Statutes, 1910, p. 370.

Act of October 31, 1895, New Zealand Statutes, 1895. School teachers in the United States have also organized and affiliated with a central federation; American Federationist, January, 1903, p. 15. Report of State Railways Administration for 1909. (New Statesman, May 8, 1915, special supplement on "State and Municipal Enterprise,' P. 25.)

Б

Instituted by ministerial decree September 24, 1911. (Ibid., p. 25.)

appointed by the minister of public works, four are working employees.1

In the Prussian railway system, autocratic as it is, there have been since 1892 a series of advisory committees appointed by the minister of public works, whose express mission it is to smooth the working of the system by advising on all possible points of friction between management and operatives.2 In the Swiss administration it is said to be an invariable custom for the general secretary of the railwaymen's trade union to be appointed a full member of the board of administration, the supreme governing authority of the railway system.3

The foregoing are instances of formal agreements sanctioned by law or established by administrative order. Far more extensive than these formal agreements is the unofficial recognition of unions, especially in England and the United States, where the head of the department deals with the representatives of the union and then issues orders conforming to the agreement but not mentioning the union. In this respect the collective bargain is similar to that of certain large railway systems in the United States which nominally do not recognize the railroad brotherhoods, but actually issue orders, through the general manager, to which the unions have previously consented.

The advantage to government of formal recognition of unions consists in establishing permanent boards of arbitration through which all grievances take their regular course. Without such boards the unions, through political influence, go over the heads of the departments to the legislative branch of government. This is proper enough, and, indeed, is inevitable under universal suffrage, no matter what restrictions the administration attempts to place upon them. But, with permanent boards of arbitration, practically all grievances and demands of the union can be settled within the department, leaving to the legislature (municipal, state, or federal) only the general policy of establishing standards of hours and wages to be enforced through the arbitration boards.

4

1 New Statesman, May 8, 1915, p. 25 from Emil Davies, The Collectivist State in the Making, 1914.

2

Ibid., p. 25. See also E. S. Bradford, "Prussian Railway Administration," Annals of the American Academy, Vol. XXIX, 1907, p. 310. New Statesman, May 8, 1915, special supplement, p. 25,,

'See "The Minimum Wage," p. 179; "Hours of Labor," pp. 259, 260.