tration has adjusted several disputes in New York City, including two among the silver workers and one of the umbrella handle makers. It also terminated within three days a strike of switchmen, which threatened to tie up the railroad yards of Buffalo, and assisted in preventing a similar suspension of operations in the railroad yards about New York harbor on account of a disagreement regarding a proposed advance in wages, which was finally submitted to arbitration. New Trade The number of wage earners directly concerned in strikes or lockouts begun in the last quarter of 1906 (9,100) is very small compared with the number that obtained improved conditions of employment without any stoppage of work. Every important railway company in the state, for example, has adopted a new wage schedule providing for the higher wages or shorter hours, or both, asked for by employees in the train service, and in but the single instance of the Buffalo yards was there any interruption of work. In other industries in which collective bargaining is rendered possible by thorough organization on both sides, disagreements between the employers and the employed have been harmonized by recourse to arbitration or continued negotiations between their representatives. The associations of employing and journeymen carpenters in New York City have thus agreed upon a desired advance in the rate of wages in Manhattan Borough (from $4.80 to $5.00 a day), but by compromise deferred its adoption to July 1st. Similarly the national union of printing pressmen have just made an agreement with the employing job printers of the United Typothetæ for the establishment of the eight-hour day two years hence, which is reprinted in the BULLETIN. The compositors, however, maintain that this agreement was rendered possible through their own strike for the eight-hour day last year. The International Typographical Union has successively reduced the strike assessment upon its members from ten to two per cent of their wages, and at the end of the year there were only 360 men on the union strike roll in New York City as compared with 765 at the end of January. The union has just renewed its arbitration agreement with the American Newspaper Publishers' Association. Other branches of the printing trade are striving to obtain an eight-hour day, the lithographers having gone on strike and the bookbinders having voted to demand it. Trade Unions in New York. There are only four counties in New York State which have no labor organizations at presentHamilton, Lewis, Schoharie and Schulyer. About two-thirds of all trade unionists are in the four counties which constitute the city of New York (260,008 members of 678 organizations), and the remaining 53 counties are represented as follows: Erie, 189 organizations, with 30,445 members; Monroe, 90 organizations, and 15,578 members; Onondaga, 86 unions, and 8,895 members; Albany, 102 unions, and 8,854 members; Westchester, 124 unions, and 8,784 members; Schenectady, 61 unions, and 7,994 members; Orange, 80 unions, and 5,763 members; Rensselaer, 60 unions, and 5,763 members; Oneida, 65 unions, and 4,663 members. Six counties have between two and three thousand members each, namely, Niagara (2,974), Chemung (2,588), Steuben (2,458), Washington (2,412), Saratoga (2,383) and Broome (2,317), and 12 more counties have upwards of 1,000 members each, as follows: Cattaraugus (1,998), Ulster, (1,785), St. Lawrence (1,698), Dutchess (1,607), Cayuga (1,511), Jefferson (1,463), Chautauqua (1,426), Ontario (1,327), Warren (1,212), Oswego (1,198), Rockland (1,119) and Montgomery (1,053). Of the remaining counties, 9 have at least 500 union members, 10 between 100 and 500 members and 7 less than 100 members. Of the 398,494 union men and women in the state, more than 90 percent are in cities, the number having increased in the past decade from 170,215 to 372,093. Table VIII of the BULLETIN shows the growth in each of the present 45 municipalities. Trade Unions and the Law. The BULLETIN contains the text of several recent judicial decisions concerning the rights of members of trade unions. The courts of this state have repeatedly ruled that a union may be sued whether it is incorporated or not, and when the union rules do not provide for a review, by the higher officials of the organization, of disciplinary votes of suspension or expulsion, the courts themselves will protect the rights of any member disciplined contrary to the rules of the union. The Appellate Division last month gave a careful interpretation of the law of extortion as applied to union officials, in a decision unanimously sustaining the conviction of a labor leader who extorted $2,700 from a contractor by a threat of calling the members of his union out on strike. The court says: "All controversies between capital and labor resulting in a strike injuriously affect more or less the entire community. They are sufficiently disastrous and deplorable when they result from an honest difference of opinion between the employer and the employed; but when, as here, the strike is protracted long after all grievances have been adjusted, by an officer of a labor union who betrays his trust to the fellow members of his union, and in effect deprives them of their rights to work until he has unlawfully extorted money from their employer for his own ends, the crime is intolerable from any point of view, and should be speedily and severely punished." New Labor Laws Abroad. In England where the beneficiary funds of trade unions were protected from seizure by legal process until the celebrated Taff Vale decision of the House of Lords, three years ago, reversed the construction given to the Trade Union Acts of 1871 and 1876, Parliament has just enacted a new trade disputes' law (reprinted in the BULLETIN), which not only provides that no court shall entertain an action against a trade union or any of its officers or members in respect of any tortious act alleged to have been committed on behalf of the union, but also changes the law of conspiracy so as to make it lawful for two or more persons to agree to do what any individual may lawfully do (boycott) and expressly legalizes peaceful picketing. Parliament has also revised and codified the workmen's compensation acts of 1897 and 1900, which virtually require the insurance of workmen against accidents by providing that the employer shall indemnify every employee injured irrespective of any question of fault or negligence. The new act brings within its application seamen and many other classes of workmen not before included, and contains the novel feature of assimilating to industrial accidents cases of industrial poisoning from lead, mercury, arsenic, phosphorous, etc. No American state has yet enacted a work men's compensation law, although every country in Europe has long since recognized the failure of employer's liability laws to remedy the evils arising out of industrial accidents. Accidents. The record of accidents kept in the Department of Labor embraces only such as occur in factories, mines and quarries subject to the visitation of the factory inspectors. This record is constantly improving, and the department now receives more accident reports in one month than it received in an entire year down to 1900. In the last three months of 1906 the total number of accident reports received was 4,616, which was equivalent to sixty accidents on every working day in the quarter. Many of the accidents are of minor consequence, as the record includes every injury resulting in the loss of a half day's work; but at least 651 accidents entailed permanent disability of greater or less degree, and 488 more will probably have similar results, while 86 were fatal accidents. A very considerable proportion of the fatal accidents occur in connection with the transmission of power or conveying apparatus, such as elevators (16 deaths), factory locomotives or cars (8 deaths), belts, pulleys, etc., or else in connection with electricity (7 deaths). Of the lesser injuries, one of the most prolific causes is the stamping machine or punch press; of 214 workers thus injured, fully onehalf lost one or more fingers. The Bureau of Factory Inspection has been presented with models of some very useful safety guards for circular saws, and joiner, buzz-planer and shaper machines, which are on exhibition at its office. Contributions to this collection of models of safety devices are invited. Factory Inspection. The force of the bureau of factory inspection inspected 11,606 factories, bakeshops, tenement buildings, etc., in the last quarter of 1906, which represents an increase of 2,500 inspections over the corresponding period of the previous year. Particular attention, moreover, was given to the enforcement of compliances with orders issued to factory owners; the inspectors having followed up and investigated 8,260 such orders, as compared with 1,080 a year previous. Advantage was taken of the new law authorizing the labeling of goods and stoppage of work in unclean factories, 106 times; while similar proceedings were carried out in four bakeries where the inspector's notices had been persistently ignored. In the same quarter the bureau began 99 prosecutions of manufacturers for deliberate violation of the law. Licenses to do manufacturing in tenement houses were issued to 504 owners, all but three of which buildings were in New York City. At the end of December there were 6,204 licenses outstanding, each representing one building. The number of employment certificates issued to children by the local boards of health steadily increases in all the first and second class cities. The Department finds it necessary again to issue warning that a gang of swindlers are blackmailing ignorant proprietors of small factories in New York city by selling them tickets to an alleged factory inspectors' ball. It seems unnecessary to announce that factory inspectors never give entertainments and are not allowed to solicit or receive money for any purpose what ever. The Question of The amendments to the Labor Law recommended by the Commissioner of Labor include the reduction of the maximum working hours of women employed in factories from 60 to 58 a week, thus strengthening the tendency strongly manifested in the last few years, especially in New York City factories, to adopt the 9 or 91-hour day as the normal workday. The Prentice bill, embodying this change, also encourages the adoption of the Saturday half-holiday, which is now almost universal in city building trades, by permitting the necessary amount of overtime to be made on the other five days of the week. Investigations made by factory inspectors indicate that at the present time, owing to the scarcity of labor and the consequent independence of wage workers, overtime work is quite voluntary in many if not most industries. The bill recognizes the necessities of manufacturers of confectionery and other commodities made of perishable materials by permitting the employment of women twelve hours a day or 66 hours a week for not to exceed six weeks each year. |