CHAPTER 13.—WAGE R™
TRY CONTROLLI:

Tn INDUS-1
 TH

"EW ZEALAND and several Australian States have developed
their methods for settlement in industrial disputes to such an
extent that they imply State regulation of industry and the
determination of wages by industrial courts. No European State has
proceeded in the same fashion. Two States, however, have organized
their industrial life under control of the State in a way which, exceeding
 even the fixation of minimum wages, implies to a large extent
determination of general wages by State authorities. Italy and
Russia have proceeded along that road, though in different ways. A
general examination of their industrial systems would, of course,
exceed the scope of the present study, and therefore the following
discussion will be restricted to those aspects of the question which
parallel the minimum wage problem in other countries.
The Italian Corporate State

THE Italian Government itself has emphasized the opinion that
its industrial legislation implies a method for the solution of
the problems attacked elsewhere by minimum wage legislation. In
its reply to the questionnaire of the International Labor Office as to
the proposed international convention on minimum wage legislation,
it points out that it considers its legislation “ the most complete and
appropriate means of regulating minimum wages in the trades in
question,” and expresses the desire that the conference examine
“ whether account should be taken of the Italian system in the
framing of its proposals.”* The Italian Government claims for
its system that it “ removes in its early stages and attacks at its root
the primary cause of the evils which the conference proposes to deal
with in its decisions—i. e. the absence of organization among the
workers—and gives the workers the benefit of collective agreements
and a guaranty that collective disputes will be equitably settled by
the machinery of the conciliation and other bodies specially set up
for the purpose.”
The Government considers it desirable “that the decisions of the
conference should be based on the methods adopted in the present
connection not only in some States but in all the States members of
the organization.
The general principles of the legislation referred to are laid down
in a “charter of labor” (carta del lavoro)? The charter was preceded
 by a law on collective labor relations? and by a royal decree
thereon issued on July 1, 1926.*+ The law of April 3, 1926, provides
1 International Labor Conference, eleventh session, Geneva, May, 1928. Report on
Minimum Wage-Fixing Machinery. Geneva, International Labor Office, 1928, p. 18.
? Gazzetta Ufficiale, Apr. 80, 1927, No. 100.
31dem, Apr. 14. 1926, No. 87.
* Pennachio, Alberto: The Corporative State. New York, Italian Historical Society,
927, appendix.