Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act

The Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894 was drafted by that government’s most radical member, William Pember Reeves, a socialist among liberals. Addressing the problem of employers’ noncompliance with arbitration decisions, Reeves devised a system in which participation was voluntary for unions but compulsory for…

… and to introduce, in the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894, a conciliation and compulsory arbitration system intended to end industrial unrest and give the unions the means of protecting their members. The growth of unions was stimulated by the fact that only through them could the workers use…

…labour (1891–96), wrote the influential Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act (1894) and introduced the most progressive labour code in the world at that time.