W. L. STODDARD TELLS OF SHOP COMMITTEES

Speaking at Phillips Brooks House last evening, Mr. W. L. Stoddard '07 discussed various phases of "Employee Representation in Industry." Mr. Stoddard is an authority on this part of the labor situation. During the war he was a member of the War Labor Board, which instituted the shop committee system in a large number of plants while the war was going on.

"The matter of employee representation is not a new idea by any means," said Mr. Stoddard. "In England it was established by law in the mining districts as far back as 1890. The great impulse toward it came during the war, when shop committees were established in many industrial plants of this country by the War Labor Board. The chief object of this was to increase the production of labor, and therefore production committees as well as grievance committees were established."

In discussing the difference between the shop committee system and the usual relation between employers and workers, he said. "The usual employee representation in this country has been through a man who is not a worker in the shop itself, but who is employed by the union for the purpose of looking after the worker's rights. This system of having the employees represented by the union, through a special agent, is sometimes efficient, and sometimes not. In general, it might be said that it concerns itself chiefly with the settlement of primary matters, such as wages, hours, and so forth, and does not attempt to deal with the underlying problems of friendly relations between employer and employee. On the other hand, the shop committee system, besides settling the matter of wages, also goes a long way toward handling the problem of the relation between employers and employees. In a few cases this system has failed to work, on account of bad feeling; but this had feeling is usually on the part of the employer.