Labour Law

Minimum Wage Laws.

Machinery for fixing legal minimum rates of wages exists in England (i.) under the Trade Boards Acts; (ii.) for workers in agriculture; (iii.) for underground workers in mines. Under the Trade Boards Acts, 1909 and 1918, trade boards may be set up for any trade in which "no adequate machinery exists for the effective regulation of wages throughout the trade" and to which it is expedient to apply the Act "having regard to the rate of wages prevailing in the trade or any part of the trade." This gives to the Acts a wider basis than that of the Act of 1909, which was of an experimental nature, being the first attempt to regulate wages known to English law, although similar measures had for many years been operating in some of the Aus tralian States. The Act of 1909 had been adopted as a result of a popular agitation against the so-called "sweating system." Trade Board Acts are thus fundamentally "protective" in intent. To give the workers of the type in contemplation merely a civil right to sue their employers for any deficiency in the wages they re ceived below the minimum fixed by the appropriate trade board, would have been of little use to them. Consequently provision is made for the prosecution of employers who are guilty of paying less than the rates fixed. But the Acts also necessarily provide for the enforcement of the worker's contractual right to receive the minimum fixed for his trade. Not only can the worker himself sue his employer for any deficiency in the amount paid to him, but the officials of the Ministry of Labour, whose duty it is to enforce the law and if necessary to prosecute defaulting employers, may themselves institute civil proceedings on behalf of the worker, if he fails to do so himself ; and, moreover, when an employer is prosecuted for an offence under the Acts, the Court adjudicating on the prosecution may, in addition to imposing the appropriate fine on a convicted employer, order him, on the same occasion, to pay whatever sum is civilly due to the worker. For details of these measures see TRADE BOARDS. Here it is only necessary to mention this legislation in order to show how parliament has intervened to overreach the common law principle as to the freedom of the parties to fix whatever consideration they will.

The Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act 2924 is also intended to assist a poorly organized class of worker to secure a reasonable consideration in his contract of service. In this Act it is expressly provided that the agricultural wages committees established for each county, in fixing a minimum rate must, "so far as practicable, secure for able-bodied men such wages as in the opinion of the committee are adequate to promote efficiency and to enable a man . . . to maintain himself and his family in accordance with such a standard of comfort as may be reasonable in relation to the nature of his occupation." The agricultural wages committees have the duty of fixing minimum time rates of wages for the agricultural workers in their district, and they may also fix min imum piece-work rates, and higher rates for overtime worked beyond some specified limit. The rates fixed by the local com mittees have to go to the Agricultural Wages Board (covering the whole of England and Wales) for an order to be made to put them into operation. Like the Trade Boards Acts, this act provides for both penalties on the employers who pay less than the minimum fixed, and for enforcing the worker's civil claim to have any de ficiency made good in the amount paid to him. Here again the

court may make an order for the amount of wages owing to a worker to be paid to him, at the same time as it imposes a fine upon the employer.

The Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act 1912 is on a different footing. It secures to the workers affected a minimum wage per day below which their earnings, primarily based on output, may not fall, by providing that "it shall be an implied term in every contract for the employment of a workman underground in a coal mine that the employer shall pay to that workman wages at not less than the minimum rate settled under this Act." Here there is no question of imposing a fine upon the employer for paying less than the minimum rate to a more or less helpless worker. The Act is merely concerned with the terms of the contracts of em ployment of the workers affected. It establishes their right to a minimum wage fixed in a certain way, and leaves them to enforce it themselves by civil proceedings, if necessary. The joint district boards by which these rates are to be determined, are "a body of persons recognized by the Board of Trade as the joint district board of that district," which means that any existing joint com mittee representative of trade unions and mine-owners may be declared to be the joint district board for this purpose. The Act assumes that as a general rule the parties will be capable of them.

selves organizing a joint district board, and thus differs profoundly from the other two types of minimum wage law here considered. Check-weighing.—Coal-miners whose wages depend on the amount of mineral hewn by them, are bound to be paid by weight, and the mineral must be weighed as near to the pit-mouth as is reasonably practicable (Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887, 5.12). All such workers have, in addition, the statutory right to appoint their own representatives (check-weighers) to check the weigh ing of the mineral (see the Coal Mines Regulation Act 1887, s.13; the Coal Mines [Check Weigher] Act 1894, and the Coal Mines [Weighing of Minerals] Act 1905). A similar right was given by the Checkweighing in Various Industries Act 1919 to workers engaged in the manufacture of iron and steel, in loading and un loading goods at docks, in quarrying chalk and limestone, in the manufacture of cement and lime, and in any other industry to which the Act may be applied by regulations of the secretary of State. This act provides for the checking by a representative of the workers of the measuring as well as the weighing of material produced, handled or gotten, where the wages are paid accord ing to measure instead of by weight.

Particulars.

To enable workers paid by the piece to know if the correct amount of wages is paid out to them, the Factory and Workshop Act 1901 (s. 116) requires employers to give all workers in textile factories particulars of the rate of wages applicable to the work in question, and of the work given them to do. These particulars must either be given in writing to each individual worker, or exhibited on a placard in the work room (or, in some cases, both methods must be used). These provisions have been extended, with appropriate modifications, to a large number of other trades, under powers given to the home secretary in the same section.