AN EXPERIMENT IN SYNDICALISM
During the last twenty years New Zealand has tried many social and
economic experiments; these experiments have been made by her own
Legislature, and her own people; and as a rule they have been remarkably
successful: during the last few months she has had the experience of a new
one conducted by strangers, and made at her expense. Fortunately there is
reason to believe that this one will be found to have resulted in benefit
to New Zealand and its people, while it may prove of service to older and
larger countries. It is probable that the most widely known of New
Zealand's experiments is that which aimed at doing justice to employers
and employees alike by the substitution for the Industrial strike of a
Court of Arbitration, fairly constituted, on which both Workers and
Employers were equally represented. This law has been branded by the
supporters of the usual Strike policy with the name of "Compulsory
Arbitration," the object being to discredit it in the eyes of the workers,
as an infringement of their liberty. The title is unfair and misleading.
Unlike most laws, it never has been of universal application either to
Workers or Employers, but only to those among them that chose to form
themselves into industrial Unions, and to register those Unions as subject
to the provisions of the Statute.
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