IV. AGREEMENTS AND AWARDS TERMINATING DISPUTES: I. Quarrymen of Orleans County.... II. Silverware workers of East Syracuse. GENERAL STATEMENT. To the Legislature: In transmitting the report of the Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration, your attention is called to chapter 9 of the Laws of 1901 abolishing the Board of Mediation and Arbitration and creating the Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration in the Department of Labor, under special charge of the Commissioner of Labor, and providing that the Commissioner of Labor, together with the First and Second Deputy Commissioners, act as the Board of Mediation and Arbitration. This law became operative on the appointment of the Commissioner of Labor, March 6, 1901; leaving an interim of two months and five days which are included in this report, during which time the former State Board of Mediation performed the functions of this Bureau. Attention is also called to the fact that a discrepancy existed in the dates on which the report year of the former Department of Mediation and Arbitration and the other departments included in the Department of Labor closed; it having been decided that the report year of the Department of Labor shall close September 30th. Therefore, this report of the Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration covers but nine months, including the period from January 1st to September 30th. Appended is a summary statement of the work of the State Board in the nine months January 1 to September 30, 1901. It shows that intervention was made in seventeen disputes in that period. As a general rule such intervention was made upon the Board's initiative, but in one instance the intervention was made upon the request of the employer and in two instances upon the request of the employees. The activity of the Board was entirely in the direction of mediation or conciliation; that is, it consisted in offering its good offices towards bringing together the dis putants in conference or towards the formation of terms that would be acceptable to both sides. In ten of the seventeen cases the intervention of the Board might be termed mediation; in three of these disputes the Board was unable to induce the disputants to confer with each other, in four cases conferences were arranged by the Board but no settlement arrived at, and in three cases conferences were arranged which resulted in the termination of the dispute. In seven cases the efforts of the Board were directed not so much towards arranging conferences between the parties in dispute as towards arranging satisfactory terms of settlement, and in three of the seven disputes the Board assisted in terminating the disagreement. No dispute was referred to the Board for arbitration in the period covered by this report. Full particulars of the disputes in which the Board, or any of its members, intervened for the purpose of promoting a settlement are given in Part III, and reference to the page thereof is made in the third column of the summary statement on the opposite page. The most extensive dispute of the year was the general strike of the machinists for a nine-hour day, but the dispute attended with most serious results was that on the street railway system of Albany and Troy. |