III. SUMMARY OF RESOLUTIONS OF CON

GRESSES, AND MEMORIALS RESPECTING
LABOUR LEGISLATION

I. LABOUR LEGISLATION AND INSURANCE OF GENERAL APPLICATION.

I.

First Austrian Conference on Housing, Vienna, 25th-26th November, 1911. (Soziale Praxis, XXI., No. 16,487.)

Fund for the provision of dwellings; Credit Institutions; Building Societies; establishment of Housing Committees; exemption from taxes for emergency dwellings; rebates of taxes and fees for building societies of public utility.

2. Danish Social Congress, 10th September, 1911. (Tidsskrift for Arbejderforsikring, 1911, 274).

Prevention of carrying out the proposal to introduce compulsory insurance instead of the Old Age Pensions Act; prevention of the reduction of the subventions granted to the Unemployment funds; prevention of attacks on sick funds recognised by the State, and at least retention of the subvention hitherto granted; modification of the Acts mentioned above on the principles established when they were passed; Act relating to public subventions for educating and maintaining fatherless children; Act relating to the provision of meals at school for necessitous children; improvement of conditions in educational institutions and homes for children; extension of the existing labour legislation by factory legislation (maximum working day for adult male workers-suppression of juvenile and home work). The funds for extending social legislation should be provided by imposing taxes upon the wealthy classes, and by restricting the estimates for armaments.

3. Forty-fourth Trade Union Congress, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 4th-9th September, 1911. (Labour Gazette, Vol. XIX., p. 330).

Restriction of the hours of labour to eight per day for workpeople generally; amendment of the Mines Regulation Act, the Factory and Workshop Act, the Shop Clubs Act, the Workmen's Compensation Act, and the Fair Wages resolution of the House of Commons; the wages and general conditions of labour of workers employed by contractors for the Government; Labour Exchanges; State Insurance evictions during trade disputes; state help for blind workpeople; secular education.

British Labour Party, Twelfth Annual Conference, Birmingham. Trade Disputes.-Protest against attempts to repeal the Trade Disputes Act of 1906; the Osborne decision.

Labour Exchanges.-Advocacy of the method of one person one job"; Action of officials of Labour Exchanges in the case of trade disputes; establishment of local advisory trade committees; prohibition of supplying workpeople to employers who do not pay the standard rate of wages.

Provision for the Blind.-Establishment of technical schools, national and municipal workshops, and special national elementary and secondary schools with free maintenance and education for all blind children.

Insurance Act.-Reduction of the contributions payable by workers and by employers with a view to their ultimate extinction.

Nationalisation of railways, canals, and mines.

Education.-Raising of the school-leaving age to 16; maintenance allowances for children in primary and secondary schools; limitation of the hours of boy and girl labour to 30 per week, so as to provide 20 or more hours per week for physical, technological and general training.

Workmen's Compensation Act.-Compensation equal to full wages; Institu tion doctors not to report on a workman's condition to his employers or their insurers without his consent; payment of expenses for medical attendance and medicine; appointment of medical referees with adequate remuneration, required to devote their whole time to work under the Act to the exclusion of private practice; Compensation equal to 75 per cent of the wages if these are under £1 and to the full wages if under 14s. per week; the loss of an eye to count as total incapacity; extension of claims to nervous shock, etc., arising from the use of pneumatic tools,

etc.

Unemployment.-Prevention of unemployment on the lines of the Labour Party's Right to Work Bill.

Checkweighing.-Extension of the Checkweighmen's Act to all iron ore and stone quarries in Great Britain and Ireland.

tracts.

Fair Wages.-Payment of trade union rates of wages under all public con-
Government Service.-Minimum wage of 30s. per week.

Sunday Work.-Prohibition of work from noon on Saturdays till 6 a.m. on Mondays in paper, cotton, worsted, woollen, flax and hemp factories, also in bleaching and dyeing works, except to do repairs to machinery. Introduction of a Bill on the lines of Mr. Jowett's Bill.

Bakehouses.-Introduction of a Bill on the lines of Mr. Wilkie's Bill.

Old Age Pensions.-Reduction of the age for receiving a pension to 60 years, and removal of certain disqualifications.

Industrial Dirt.-Legislation requiring employers to provide suitable cleansing facilities for the workers and their working clothes; Restoration of §77 of the Coal Mines Act in its original form.

Motor Cab Legislation.—Amendment of the Motor Car Act, 1903, so far as it affects motor cab drivers; motor cab drivers to be brought under the Workmen's Compensation Act.

II. LABOUR LEGISLATION FOR PARTICULAR TRADES.

1. Hotels and Restaurants.

Congress of the League of German Hotel Assistants, Nüremburg, 18th23rd March, 1912.

All persons employed in the hotels, etc., shall be subject to the regulations in regard to workers' protection. Maximum working day for all employees above the age of sixteen, twelve hours; this may be extended to fifteen hours, including the intervals for rest, if business contingencies should require it, thus leaving an uninterrupted period of rest of nine hours out of the twenty-four.

An interruption of work shall be considered as a period of rest within the meaning of these regulations, only if the employé is allowed to leave the rooms within which his work is carried on, and if the interval amounts to at least one hour. Midday rest of at least one hour.

Apprentices and persons under the age of sixteen shall not be employed between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Daily maximum working hours not to exceed ten.

Uninterrupted weekly rest of at least thirty-six hours.

A list of employees stating their names must be posted up so that it may be seen by everybody in all hotels or licensed premises, indicating in the case of each person or group of persons their working hours, periods of rest, and on what days they are entitled to a full day of rest.

2. Hospital Employees.

Congress of the Union of German Sick Nurses, 6th October, 1911. Dresden. (Referate, Berlin, Deutscher Verlag Berlin S.W. 48).

(1) A working day of ten hours for the time being. (2) Separate nursing staff for day and night duty. (3) Course of training three years; by way of transition from the present system at least two years of training. (4) Courses for the preliminary training of matrons and teaching staff. (5) Prohibition of employing uncertificated nurses in public institutions. (6) Calculation of years of service when changing field of activity. (7) Adequate system of state accident insurance. (8) Inclusion under the insurance of private employés. (9) Appropriate compensation for loss of board during leave of absence. (10) A State inquiry with reference to the economic position of sick nurses.

Vol. VII., No. 6.

1912

Bulletin

OF THE

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE

[NOTE.-The German, French, and English editions of the Bulletin are referred to as G.B., F.B., and E.B. respectively.]

National Labour Legislation

1. LAWS

LAWS AND

AND ORDERS

I. Austria

Gesetz, betreffend die Abänderung des allgemeinen Berggesetzes vom 23. Mai 1854 R.G. Bl. Nr. 146, hinsichtlich der Regelung der Lohnzahlung beim Bergbau, Nr. 107. Vom 17. Mai 1912 (Reichsgesetzblatt 1912, XLIV., Stück S. 361.)

Act relating to the amendment of the General Mining Law of 23rd May, 1854 (R.G.Bl. No. 146) on the regulation of payment of wages in the mining industry. (Dated 17th May, 1912.)

I. §206 of the Civil Code, as worded in accordance with §1 of the Act of the 3rd May, 1896, R.G.Bl. No. 75, is replaced by the following regulations :—

206. The mineowner shall be bound to pay wages to his foremen at least once a month, and to his workers at least once every fortnight; whenever shorter periods for the payment of wages already exist, such periods must not be extended. On a man leaving the employment, his wages must be paid immediately. The days on which the wages will be regularly paid shall be stated in the rules of employment.

Permission to leave the employment shall not be refused by reason of claims which the mineowner or a third party may have against a foreman or worker.

206a. The wages shall be paid in cash.

Deductions from wages are permissible only in so far as they are provided for in the rules of employment or allowed by special Acts.

Lamps and tools shall be supplied by the mineowner to his workers without charge; the worker shall be liable for damage to such tools only in case he should be the cause of such damage.