Part II
GOVERNMENT LABOUR POLICY
CHAPTER XII
WAR-TIME LABOUR REGULATION AND ITS EFFECTS
Co-operation between Employers and Unions at Beginning of War—The Unsettling Effect of Shortage of Labour—The “Treasury” Agreements of March 1915—The Limitation of Employers’ Profits—Failure of Compulsory Arbitration—Effect of Relieving Employers of Responsibility for Labour Management—Increases of Wages and Prices—Relation of Wages to Cost of Living.
Many of our industrial difficulties to-day are due to the effect that the war, and especially the measures which it was necessary for Government to take during the war, have had upon the psychology of the workers. To attempt a description of those measures in their entirety would be wholly outside the scope of this book; those who wish to study them will find a full and lucid description in Labour Supply and Regulation, by Mr. Humbert Wolfe, C.B.E., shortly to be published by the Oxford University Press. I am only concerned to deal with them so far as they provide guidance for future policy.
Co-operation between Employers and Unions at Beginning of War
The most remarkable feature of the early days of the war was the spontaneous co-operation between employers and workpeople. On August 4, 1914, the Clyde shipbuilding and engineering employers and employees unanimously agreed to recommend their respective constituents to assist in every possible way all firms employed on urgent Government work. On August 10, a similar recommendation was adopted by the shipbuilding and engineering employers and employees on the Tyne. The matter was carried still further; on August 25, at a Joint Committee of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, the Management Committee of the General Federation of Trade Unions and the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, the meeting resolved that a strenuous effort should be made to terminate all existing trade disputes, and that whenever new points of difficulty should arise during the war, a determined attempt should be made by all concerned to reach an amicable settlement before resorting to a strike or lock-out. The spirit of this resolution was carried into immediate effect. In July 1914, there were in existence over 100 trade disputes, implicating 72,000 men; this number fell to twenty during August, in which only 9,000 workpeople were concerned; at the beginning of 1915 the number was reduced to ten, and in February 1915, to none at all. The number of fresh disputes which arose between August and December 1914, was very small. That showed the effect that clear appreciation of the national needs had both upon employers and employed.