Drawing up the Terms The joint committee of proprietors and workmen in the metallurgical industry (known as the commission paritetica) has been continuing its sittings at Milan, and gradually we are coming to a clearer idea of what the now famous workmen's ''control" is likely to prove in practice, says the Rome correspondent—_ of the "Observer." We have had also the extraordinary general meeting of the shareholders of the Fiat Ca. and the statement made to them by Signor Fornaca, a director vf the company. The latest information would tend to show a more reasonable and conciliatory disposition on the part of the operatives in determining the precise working of the "control,'"' though the position is still full of uncertainties. Factions and elements which profess a moderate policy to-day become suddenly intransight to-morrow, and vice-versa.
At any rate, the 13 points of the "control" as set out a week or so ago in the syndicalist manifesto published in ''Battaglie Sindicali," seem to have been considerably whittled away. These points claimed among other things that The Workmen's Council must control the purchase of raw material Superintend the sale of the finished article Fix the price; Superintend the rates of pay; Assign each workman. his special task; Cottrol the Conditions of employment; Decide when new machinery is necessary Look after the sanitary and hygienic conditions of the factory; Eliminate artificial crises the industry Stop "dumping."
The discussions of the Joint Committee have not yet touched more than a few of these points, which, after all, were not formulated by the workmen's members in the commission, but by outside labour opinion. With regard to such points as have so far come up for discussion the workers' delegates have not shown themselves unreal sonable.
The proprietors put forward the following with regard to discharges of operatives: "When a worker is discharged for special reasons, or when there are good grounds for supposing that the discharge is not being effected for industrial _purposes, or in the case of disciplinary measures not provided for by the regulations, the workmen's representatives shall have the right to demand explanations." According to this proposal the Men's Committee are to have the right to examine the register in which the data concerning taking on and discharge of employees are set down. In case of no.settlement being come to between the management and the internal commission, the matter is to be referred to the provincial organizations of both men and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.