CHAPTER 3—WAGE REGULATION IN
AUSTRALIA

Developments in Victoria

HE typical abuses of home work were, until 1895, as general in
T Australia as in Europe. Public attention concentrated on the
problem first in Victoria, an Anti-Sweating League being
formed in Melbourne, on whose committees were members of various
classes and political parties. Its activities continued for a long
period, even after initial successes whereby the sweating evil was
materially decreased.
Many employers, in order to avoid the careful inspection of factories
 and the advanced labor laws governing workshops, had closed
their factories and introduced home work. Many women working at
home, particularly in the clothing industry, earned only about 2s. a
day or less in 12 to 15 hours’ work. The Anti-Sweating League asked,
therefore, for the introduction of wages boards which, in particularly
culpable industries, would establish minimum wages, both for time
and piece work, for home workers and factory workers. These proposals
 were realized in 1896 by an act of Parliament, initiated by Sir
Alexander Peacock. Advocates of the measure claim as one of its
particular advantages that it realizes the principle of the British jury
system, that everyone has the right to be tried by his peers.
The boards were composed in the beginning of five Helogates elected
by the employers and re delegates elected by the workers, presided
over by an impartial chairman. Such committees were established for
the clothing, underwear, and boot and shoe industries, where home
work predominated, and for bakeries and furniture shops, where the
shop workers were underpaid. Two electorate bodies of workers
were formed, one of factory workers and one of home workers. The
tatter, wherever they had more than one-fifth of the total number of
workers, had the right to special representation.
The law of 1896 gave to the committees the following rights:
(1) To fix minimum wages for time-work and piece-work; (2) to
restrict the number of apprentices under the age of 18 years so that
the Iaw could not be evaded by the employment of apprentices in
preference to adult workers. The desire to protect white Australian
workers against lower-paid Chinese labor led to the extension of the
Yoards to industries which employed a considerable number of Chinese
workers, particularly the laundry trade.?
Since 1903 decisions of a wages board may be appealed to a tribunal
composed of a judge of the supreme court assisted by representatives
of employers and of workers. As early as 1898 the chamber of com-At

 par, £=$4.8665; 5.=24.338 cents; d.=2.03 cents.
! Victorian Year Book, 1925-26. Melbourne, 1927, p. 359.
!Broda, R.: Inwiewelt ist eine gesetzliche egy der
ndglich? Erfahrungen Englands, Canadas, und Australiens.
109031°—928—

L.ohn u, Arbeitsbedingungen
Berlin, Georg Reimer, 1911.