The “Black-Coated Proletariat”
If Trade Unionism has, in the past thirty years, successfully progressed downward to the women and the unskilled labourers, its advance, in a sense upwards, among the various sections of the “black-coated proletariat,” has been no less remarkable. In 1892 there were only the smallest signs of Trade Union organisation among the clerks and shop assistants, the various sections of Post Office and other Government employees, the municipal officers, and the life assurance agents. Among wage-earners in these various occupations, numbering in the United Kingdom possibly several millions—badly paid, working under unsatisfactory conditions, and sometimes subject to actual tyranny—there were, thirty years ago, a few dozen small and struggling Trade Unions, with only a few tens of thousands of aggregate membership. In 1920 these have developed into powerful amalgamations in most of the several sections, nearly all fully recognised by their employers, whether private or public, with whom they enter into collective agreements; and enrolling a total membership falling not far short of three-quarters of a million.
We may note first the army of shop assistants, warehousemen, and other employees in the distributive trades, wholesale and retail.[611] The National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen, and Clerks, established in 1891, made at first slow progress, and counted in 1912, after a couple of decades of growth, fewer than 65,000 members. Partly as a result of the National Insurance Act, which practically compelled all employees under £160 to join some organisation, the Union went ahead by leaps and bounds, multiplying its branches and swelling its numbers, until it counts now over 100,000 members. Meanwhile the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees (also established in 1891)—in 1918 adding to its title also “Commercial Employees and Allied Workers”—has benefited by a similar expansion, counting, in 1920, also about 100,000 members. This society started on the basis of enrolling all employees of the Co-operative Societies, whatever their crafts, and no other persons, a constitution now disapproved of by the Trades Union Congress. It is, however, not now confined to persons employed by co-operative societies; and whilst it includes a number of carmen, tailors, bakers, bootmakers, and others in co-operative employment who should more appropriately belong to other Unions, the negotiations that have been for some time in progress for the merging of both organisations in a single great Union of persons employed in the distributive trades, and the transfer of those belonging to specific crafts to their own societies, may probably presently be successful.
Of clerks, the most effective organisation is that of the clerical service of the railway companies, the Railway Clerks’ Association, which takes in also stationmasters, inspectors, and ticket-collectors (who are all eligible also for the National Union of Railwaymen, which some of them have joined). Established in 1897, it continued for a decade insignificant in magnitude, and had not by 1910 enrolled as many as 10,000 members. After the railway strike of 1911 it began to forge ahead, passing from 30,000 in 1914 to 42,000 in 1915—a total doubled by 1920, and with increasing strength it obtained gradually increasing recognition from the railway companies, successfully maintaining its right to enrol, not only clerks in the General Managers’ offices, but also inspectors and stationmasters. As its membership grew, it was able successfully to contest the elections for representatives on the committees of the various superannuation funds instituted by the companies, and thereby to demonstrate its right to speak for the whole body of railway clerks. Whilst acting in friendly association with the National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway Clerks’ Association has latterly drawn to itself an ever-increasing proportion of the inspectors and stationmasters; and in 1920, when it can count on a membership of nearly 90,000, it is claiming to speak for all grades of the Railway Clerical Administrative and Supervisory Staff. Since 1913, at least, it has been asserting a claim, as soon as the railways are nationalised, to some participation in their management; and at the end of 1919, it is understood, some promise was made by the Minister of Transport that, in any Railway Board or National Advisory Committee that may be constituted, the Railway Clerks’ Association would, with the National Union of Railwaymen and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, be accorded its due share of representation.
The great army of clerks in commercial offices has made less progress in organisation than the shop assistants and the railway clerks. For years, indeed, it seemed as if commercial clerks would not form a Trade Union; and the National Union of Clerks (established 1890) made little headway. In 1912 it had still under 9000 members. In the past seven years it has bounded up to 55,000 members.[612] There is also a small Irish Clerical Workers’ Union, principally in Dublin, resulting from a secession from the National Union. Most remarkable of all has been the formation, during the war, of a Bank Officers’ Guild and an Irish Bank Officials’ Association, having definitely Trade Union objects (though not yet seeking to join the Trades Union Congress), both of them being independent of the Bankers’ Institute, which retains the character of a scientific and educational society. There is now even a Guild of Law Court Officials, having definitely Trade Union objects.
The great body of teachers of all kinds and grades, numbering altogether about 300,000 men and women in the United Kingdom, have, during the past thirty years, become strongly and very elaborately organised in many different societies.[613] What is significant is the extent to which many of these professional associations have latterly adopted the purposes, and even the characteristic methods, of Trade Unionism. The largest of these bodies, the National Union of Teachers, established in 1890, has now over 102,000 members, and exercises great influence upon the conditions of employment of the teachers in elementary schools. During the past few years it has supported various district or county strikes for better salary-scales. The teachers in secondary schools are organised in four societies, for headmasters, headmistresses, assistant masters, and assistant mistresses respectively, united in a Federal Council of Secondary School Associations, which, though it has not yet fomented or supported a strike, has of late organised effective pressure to obtain greater security of tenure for assistants, better salary-scales, and a universal superannuation scheme.
Equally significant is the recent development of organisation among the industrial technicians, whether engineers, electricians, chemists, or merely foremen and managers; among the workers in scientific laboratories, whether for research, medical, teaching, or administrative purposes; and among the junior lecturers and assistants at University institutions. These organisations overlap in their spheres, if not also in their memberships, and are not yet stabilised, but most of them are united in the National Federation of Professional Workers of even wider scope. What is important is the growing divergence between what are essentially Trade Unions of the brain-working professionals and the purely “scientific societies” to which such persons have, until recent years, restricted their tendency to professional association. Some of the new bodies (such as the Society of Technical Engineers) have actually registered themselves as Trade Unions, a step taken also by the Medico-Political Union, a vigorous association of medical practitioners; whilst the newly formed Actors’ Association, like the National Union of Journalists, has applied for affiliation to the Trades Union Congress.
The life assurance agents—principally those employed in “industrial” insurance—number 100,000, and they have become organised in a score of societies, restricted to the staffs of particular companies. These organisations vary in their nature and in their degree of independence, from mere “welfare societies,” dominated by the management, up to aggressive Trade Unions—the strongest being the National Association of Prudential Assurance Agents. They are mostly united in two different federations. Another, and perhaps wholesomer, basis of organisation is adopted by the National Union of Life Assurance Agents, which has now some thousands of members.
But the greatest development of Trade Unionism among the “black-coated proletariat” has been among the employees of the National and Local Government. This has been entirely a growth of the past thirty years. Beginning among the manual working staff of the Postmaster-General, and among the artisans and labourers of the Government dockyards, arsenals, and other manufacturing departments, there are now a hundred and seventy separate Trade Unions of State employees, from the crews of the Customs launches and the boy clerks, up to the Admiralty Constructive Engineers and the Superintendents of Mercantile Marine Offices. Of recent years, organisation has spread to the higher grades of the Civil Service, even to the “Class I.” clerks; and practically no one below the rank of an Under-Secretary of State is held to be outside the scope of the Society of Civil Servants. All the various societies are grouped in federations, from the “Waterguard Federation” and the Prison Officers’ Federation of the United Kingdom; through the United Government Workers’ Federation and the Federal Council of Government Employees, combining the various kinds of manual working operatives; up to the Customs and Excise Federation, the Civil Service Federation, the Civil Service Alliance, and even the “National Federation of Professional Workers,” which includes also teachers. The strongest of all these bodies is probably that of the various employees of the Postmaster-General, whose fight to secure “recognition” and the opportunity for “Collective Bargaining” has extended over a couple of decades. There are about fifty separate Unions of Post Office employees, mostly small and sectional bodies; but the three principal societies (the Postal and Telegraph Clerks’ Association, the Postmen’s Federation, and the Fawcett Association) were amalgamated in 1919 into one powerful Union of Post Office Workers, with 90,000 members with eleven salaried officers, and affiliated both to the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, which can now meet the managing officials of the Post Office on something like equal terms.
The employees of the Local Authorities—thirty years ago entirely without organisation—are still not so well combined as those of the National Government. A score of different societies, from such grades as school-keepers, police and prison officers and asylum attendants, up to municipal clerks, share the work with the National Union of Corporation Workers and the Municipal Employees’ Association. A large proportion of the wage-earners employed by Local Authorities are to be found in the Unions of General Workers. The National Association of Local Government Officers and Clerks is a large and powerful body, composed mainly of the clerical and supervisory grades.
Trade Unionism in the public service received a great fillip after 1906, when Mr. Herbert Samuel at the Post Office, together with some other Ministers, “recognised” the Unions of their employees, considered their corporate representations, and agreed to meet their officials. It was still further promoted when, in 1912, the Government consented to the establishment of an independent Arbitration Tribunal for determining the terms of employment in the Civil Service for all grades and sections under £500 a year. Before this tribunal, whose awards were definitively authoritative, the representatives of any association could appear as plaintiffs, those of the Treasury appearing always as defendants. Finally, after the promulgation in 1917 of the “Whitley Report,” which the Government, in impressing on other employers, found itself constrained to adopt in its own establishments, there was established during 1919 an elaborate series of joint councils (including even the civil departments of the War Office and the Admiralty) for particular branches of establishments; for whole departments, and for whole grades of the service throughout all departments, in which equal numbers of persons nominated by the employees’ associations, and of superior officers chosen by the Government, representing the management, meet periodically to discuss on equal terms questions of office organisation, professional training, conditions of service, methods of promotion, and what not. [614]