piecework), and implemented the agreed-upon preferential shop. Most of all, the Protocol institutionalized the union’s status.
Above: Irregularity of employment and scientific management became important and meaningful areas of study that Brandeis would return to in published articles and speeches over three decades.
The Protocol of Peace banned strikes and lockouts and set up a system by which labor and management had a mechanism for settling disputes among themselves. According to the Protocol, a shop-floor workermanagement committee provided the first review. If no resolution could be found, the next step would be to appeal to the Board of Grievances, composed of two members each from labor and management. Issues that still remained unresolved would then be referred to the Board of Arbitration, which included one representative from labor, one from management, and Brandeis for the public. Decisions of the Board of Arbitration were binding. Brandeis believed that the Protocol would succeed because it offered rationality, efficiency, and cooperation in the place of irrationality, waste, and obstinacy. The Protocol also offered relief from some of the worst abuses of the industry and was adapted for use by other garment unions in New York and elsewhere. Brandeis served as chairman of other labor boards and secured placement of favorable articles in supportive publications such as La Follette’s Magazine. Brandeis described the Protocol of Peace as an “essay in industrial democracy.”
at lower levels, creating increased pressure on the Board of Arbitration. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of March 28, 1911, escalated a struggle for the soul of the rank-and-file between the radical local leaders and the more conservative group, the International, and led to the creation of the Factory Investigating Commission, which brought the state of New York in to address such issues as worker safety, factory sanitation, and industry regulation. In July 1915, New York mayor John Purroy Mitchel called a gathering of prominent citizens that included Brandeis and Felix Adler to try to save the Protocol. A cloak makers’ strike followed a general lockout in July 1916, and by August of that year the preferential shop was gone and the Protocol of Peace with it. Despite the eventual collapse of the Protocol of Peace, Brandeis had helped lay the groundwork for the use of collective bargaining, mediation, and arbitration and secured labor’s place at the table alongside management in seeking to achieve industrial democracy and peace.
In time, however, events from inside and outside the industry compromised the effectiveness of the Protocol. Grievances accumulated
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