In January 2008 one of the first posts on this website Methods of Industrial Peace within the Empire quoted an article written almost 100 years ago after a period of considerable industrial disturbances on the Witwatersrand.
Advocate G Hartog surveyed the situation and here are his conclusions. The heading to this post was the expression used by him. It seems that after 100 years ‘man’ (managers, trade unionists and workers) has not changed very much when there are disagreements over wages and other benefits.
“To arrive at some conclusions as to the trend of new legislation, it will not be out of place to sum up the inferences that may be drawn from the preceding survey.
In the first place it is clear that, with human nature environed and educated as it is at present, none of the methods reviewed have resulted in a complete escape from the violences and disturbances of strikes and lock-outs.
Secondly, it would seem that both the economic and moral advantages lie with the English method, because apparently a free submission puts the disputants upon their honour, whilst the surrender of the freedom to settle or to fight, creating as it does a predisposition to resent obedience to a tribunal that has not been freely invoked, seems to explain the failure of compulsory methods.”
Prof. Chapman says that
“the distinctive feature of English methods of industrial peace at the present time is the confidence reposed in the disputants to reach a solution of their troubles by continued discussion. All that the State does is to mediate, prevent premature outbreak, and lend aid in the form of the helpful suggestions which men of wide experience can so easily make, if it is found that conflict of interest is irreconcilable.
… To generalise from English experience it would seem that the solution of the problem of industrial peace is to be found in the Joint Wages Board, representatives of masters and men, because on the one hand they alone are in possession of the relevant facts, and because on the other, of the presence of a watchful and unbiased intermediary, whose main function it is to prevent a hasty appeal to the strike or lock-out.”
“Thus, in the third place, the essentials for success would seem to be voluntary submission to boards composed on the English plan, impatient of technicalities, so constituted as to be rapidly invoked, but not so permanent as to court the risk of becoming bureaucratic.”
[See Mr Warinton Smyth’s able review at Kimberley, on September 16th.]
“Fourthly and lastly, it is clear that as the primitive is not yet exorcised from man, British legislators have been compelled to recognise “the right to strike,” i.e., the right to invoke methods which hurt not only those immediately concerned, but are intended to, and do inflict suffering and loss upon a wide circle of individuals outside and innocent of the grievance, and powerless to remove it. But what is equally clear is that the demagogic insistence on the right to strike is apt to emphasise and accelerate rupture rather than the means of preventing it.
Therefore it becomes certain that it is the plain duty of the law, upon a dispute arising, to effect such a period of delay, and to provide in that period such early, competent and tactful intervention, as will enable calmer counsels to prevail.”