rate lower than the minimum for handicapped or part-time employees or apprentices. The Board was authorized to make different orders for the same industry in different localities; to suspend temporarily, vary or revise any of its orders and to make all necessary regulations. The Governor in Council was authorized to make regulations to assist in the administration of the act.

Ontario

A minimum wage law enacted in Ontario in 1920 (c. 87) applied to females working for wages in any trade or occupation, not including farm laborers or domestic servants. The law was to be administered by a Minimum Wage Board of five members, two of whom should be women. The Board was authorized to establish a minimum wage for employees in any trade, occupation or calling and to fix a wage lower than the minimum wage for employees classified as handicapped, or part-time employees, or as apprentices. When in the opinion of the Board the scale of wages paid any class of employees appeared inadequate or unfair they could arrange a conference between equal numbers of representatives of the employers and employees concerned, with a distinterested person appointed by the Board as chairman but without voting power. Upon receipt of the report of such a conference the Board could recommend matters of difference to the same or a new conference or could establish a minimum wage forthwith. The Board was organized in November, 1920, and in January, 1921, adopted regulations which required all employers of female labor to keep records of the names of workers and wages paid and to hold such records available for inspection by the Board's agents. Minimum rates of wages have been established for female workers in almost the whole industrial field.

Sections were added in 1921 (c. 78) giving the Board

power, on petition of employers or employees or on its own motion, to suspend temporarily, vary or revise any of its orders in accordance with special or changed conditions in any industry or establishment. It could also make different orders for the same industry or industries in different localities of the province when in its judgment such action was justified. An amendment in 1922 (c. 91) gave the Board additional power to establish maximum hours and wage rates for overtime.

SUMMARY

Provision for the payment of fair wages on government contracts was made first in Canada by the Dominion Government when the House of Commons resolved in 1900 that the wages current in the district should be paid on government works. An amendment looking to the better observance of the resolution was adopted in 1907 and its scope was broadened considerably in 1922. British Columbia adopted the fair-wage policy of the Dominion Government in 1900 but the Province of Manitoba brought the fairwage legislation to its fullest development by an act of 1916, which established a Fair Wage Board charged with the duty of recommending minimum wages and maximum hours on provincial works. The fair-wage principle has received some recognition also in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Alberta, New Brunswick and the Yukon Territory, but little progress has been made in the two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec. The device is quite unknown in the United States.

All of the provinces except New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have enacted minimum wage legislation for women workers. In 1917 Alberta included in its factory act a minimum wage regulation for workers of both sexes but it was largely replaced by a minimum wage law for women

passed in 1922. The first minimum wage laws were enacted in the Western provinces, Manitoba and British Columbia leading the way in 1918. Saskatchewan followed the next year and the movement spread to the East, but there the laws were given no application to hours and working conditions as in the West. The Quebec act of 1919 was more limited in its application than the earlier measures, and the Nova Scotia law of 1920 applied only to women workers in factories and shops. However, the Ontario law of the same year provided for the establishment of minimum wages for women in any trade or occupation, not including farm laborers or domestic servants. In 1925 British Columbia passed a minimum wage law for male workers.

Until the passing of this act in British Columbia, Canadian minimum wage laws, like those of the United States, applied only to women and children. Seven provinces, with nine-tenths of the population, have such legislation, administered by minimum wage boards. In the United States since 1912 a dozen or more states, and the District of Columbia, have enacted either "flat rate" or "wage board" laws for women and children.1 The rapid acceptance of the principle in Canada has been largely due to the active support of organized labor, in contrast to the apathetic attitude of union officials in the United States. The movement has had a greater development in Australia, the country of its origin. Beginning with Victoria in 1896 a majority of the states have established wage boards which fix wage scales for men and women workers in a number of occupations. A similar development has followed the passing of the Trade Boards Act of Great Britain in 1909.

1 Commons and Andrews, Principles of Labor Legislation, pp. 195-96.

CHAPTER VII

A WORK-DAY OF EIGHT HOURS 1

"The adoption of an eight hours day or a forty-eight hours week as the standard to be aimed at where it has not already been attained." (Treaty of Peace: Article 427, 4.)

The following modifications are permitted in industrial undertakings: (1) exclusion of supervisory or confidential employees; (2) where the customary hours are less than eight on one or more days of the week, nine hours or less may be worked on the remaining days; (3) workers on shifts may be employed in excess of eight hours in any one day or forty-eight in any one week provided that their average number of hours in a period of three weeks or less does not exceed eight per day and forty-eight per week; (4) in continuous processes carried on by shifts the working hours may be increased to fifty-six in the week on the average; (5) the eight-hour limit may be exceeded in case of accident or urgent work to be done to machinery or plant or in case of "force majeure" (1919 convention). In inland navigation and the fishing industry the member nations may enact legislation limiting hours in the direction of the international standard with necessary modifications to meet peculiar climatic and industrial conditions (1920 recommendations). Employees in bakeries shall not be required to work between II p. m. and 5 a. m. but this period in certain cases may be changed, with the consent of both parties, to 10 p. m. and 4 a. m. (1925 convention).

ACCORDING to the Report of the Royal Commission on Industrial Relations the eight-hour day has already been adopted in many industries in Canada. It has been secured under industrial agreements by a large proportion of the

1 Hours of women workers are generally regulated by the laws with respect to hours of children and young persons, and accordingly they are treated in Chapter IX.

Report of commission appointed under order-in-council (P. C. 670) to enquire into industrial relations in Canada. Printed as a supplement to the Labour Gazette, vol. xix, at p. 860.

printers, building tradesmen, machinists, pulp and paper workers and electrical workers, and, in general, workers employed in the operation of steam railways have a basic eighthour day. But the fact remains that legal provision for the eight-hour day or the forty-eight-hour week for adult male workers has scarcely more than begun.

In the early seventies there was a vigorous Nine Hours Movement centered in the trade unions of Toronto.2 It made substantial progress despite the Toronto Globe's statement: "Talk to almost any sensible mechanic of average strength and he will tell you that he does not want his hours decreased; that he does not find his present labor burden

The limited application of the legal eight-hour day and the forty-eight-hour week to industry in Canada cannot be attributed to any lukewarmness on the part of the trade unions. Among the various objectives of organized labor the unions have clung to the eight-hour day long and tenaciously. At the second annual meeting of the Trades and Labor Congress in 1886, D. J. O'Donoghue, one of the early labor leaders, moved:

That this Congress would recommend to all labor organizations the agitation of the eight-hour system as the only means by which the large amount of surplus labor at present in the market of the Dominion can be employed, and a fair amount of remuneration for such labor be received."

1 For a statement on "Adoption of the 8-hour day by agreement" cf. "Proposed agenda and various memoranda relating to the National Industrial Conference" (September, 1919), published by the Department of Labor and bound in the Labour Gazette, vol. xix, at p. 1118. 2 Cf. supra, p. 67.

3 Toronto Globe editorial, May 20, 1872.

• Trades and Labor Congress, 1886, p. 30.