Thus the law ceased to be directly helpful to the very unions which had done so much to bring it about and are the only means employees possess to make the law serve them instead of becoming a new weapon for employers.
An early decision of the Arbitration Court in 1896 had declared that preference should be given to the unionists.

"Since the employer was the judge of the qualifications of his employees, the unionists did not gain much by this decision," say Le Rossignol and Stewart.

"In later awards it was usually specified that preference was granted only when the union was not a closed guild, but practically open to every person of good character who desired to join." These later decisions brought it about that the so-called preference of unionists became no preference at all.
"The Arbitration Court, except in a few minor cases, has refused to grant unconditional preference and the unionists, realizing that preference to an open union is no preference at all, now look to Parliament for redress and demand statutory unconditional preference to unionists." In 1905 strikes and lockouts were made statutory offenses, and a single judge was given the power practically to force the individual worker to labor.

After ten years of trial the law had become almost unrecognizable from the workingman's standpoint, and from this moment on the resistance to it has grown steadily.

In a decision rendered in 1906, the Chief Justice said: "The right of a workman to make a contract is exceedingly limited.