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The Government and Cotton.
The Minister of Labour is considering an experiment in legislation which may have far-reaching effects on the cotton industry. Representatives of the employers and workers in the manufacturing section of the cotton industry have asked him to introduce legislation to compel the observance of voluntary wage agreements, and he has announced his willingness to accept the suggestion. Voluntary collective bargaining is the only satisfactory basis on which the industry can be built up. On it depends not only the relations between employer and employee, but between factory and factory—but there have been notorious cases in recent years of individual manufacturers, with the consent of their workers, breaking away from agreements and by so doing upsetting the whole system of prices and wages. This kind of buccaneering has done infinite harm to the cotton in- dustry, destroying confidence and making co-operation impossible. The principle which the Minister of Labour has been asked to accept is, not that he should thrust agreements upon the industry, but that once they have been made it should be a legal obligation to keep them. This is a sound and far-reaching principle. But before a demand for legislation is complied with it should come from something more than a bare majority of the two sides.
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