Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/248

212 HARVARD LAW REVIEW jurisdiction to touch — the union consented to give a bond ren- dering the union liable to £50 for each time that any two or more members of the union in combination struck work or refused to accept work as a means of enforcing compliance with any demand made by them or in their behalf on any respondents bound by awards of the Court in favour of the union or with any demand made by any other union on any employer or employers. It was gratifying to find that the leaders of the union accepted the posi- tion as a fair one — " that in conceding to members of the union safeguards of the kind now suggested the Court should require the members to forego combination to enforce demands on the employers while preserving their individual independence — their full Hberty individually to refuse or to take work offered. For the work of the country must be done, and so long as the law provides an appropriate remedy for any injustice the remedy of withholding labour in combination in such a way as to prevent necessary operations is intolerable." ^ I may add that the imion so altered its rules as to make it prac- tically a breach of loyalty to the union to strike or refuse work in combination without the consent of the central executive. The imion appHed to the Court to restore the privilege of preference in employment, a privilege which had been conceded to the union by volimtary agreement with the employers on representations made by the union that there would be no stoppage of operations; but in the meantime the employers had terminated the agreements in pursuance of the powers therein, and had succeeded in getting their work done by others imder promises that these others would get preference in employment; and the Court refused to interfere. It did not grant preference to the so-called "loyalists"; but it declined to give preference to members of the imion and thereby interfere with arrangements which were successful so far as achiev- ing a result which the public needed so badly, especially under war conditions. The ships were being loaded and unloaded, and that was enough. In another case the Court dismissed the matter of the dispute, refused to arbitrate for a union whose members were involved in this sympathetic strike. The Court had cog- nisance of a dispute on the application of an association of iron- <* Waterside workers, 28 June, 1918, 12 Com. Arb. (1918).