[676]The Legal Position of Trade Unions, by H. H. Slesser and W. Smith Clark, 2nd ed., 1914; The Present Law of Trade Disputes and Trade Unions, by Professor W. M. Geldart, 1914; Entwicklung des Koalisationsrechts in England, by G. Krojanker, 1914; An Introduction to Trade Union Law, by H. H. Slesser, 1919; The Law of Trade Unions, by H. H. Slesser and C. Baker (to be published in 1920).
[677]Henry Broadhurst (Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons) was Under Secretary of State for the Home Department (1885-86); and Thomas Burt (Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Society) Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (1892-95).
[678]For the facts as to Trade Unionism during the war, the most convenient source is the Labour Year Book for 1916 and 1919; see also Labour in War Time, by G. D. H. Cole, 1915, and Self-Government in Industry, by the same, 1917; the large number of Government publications issued by the Local Government Board, the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Labour, and especially the Ministry of Munitions, together with the awards of the Committee on Production, most of which are briefly noticed in the monthly Labour Gazette; the monthly Circular (since 1917) of the Labour Research Department; the unpublished monthly journal of the Ministry of Munitions; Reports of the Trades Union Congress, 1915-19, and of the Labour Party Conferences, 1914-19; publications of the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee; The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions, by Sidney Webb, 1916; Women in the Engineering Trades, by Barbara Drake, 1917.
[679]Compulsory Military Service and Industrial Conscription: what they mean to the Workers(War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, 1915); Memorandum on Industrial and Civil Liberties(Woolwich Joint Committee on Problems arising from the War).
[680]The Government seems to have hoodwinked the public into believing that 80 per cent of all the excess profits was the same thing as 100 per cent of the profits in excess of 20 per cent addition to the pre-war profits.
[681]Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, Cmd. 135, 1919. The Minority Report by Mrs. Sidney Webb was republished by the Fabian Society, under the title of Men’s and Women’s Wages: Should they be equal?, 1919.
[682]Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, 1919 (9 and 10 George V. c. 42). During the first year after the cessation of hostilities the problem of restoration did not assume so acute a form as had been expected. A large part of the new automatic machinery which had been introduced in 1915-18 was found to have been greatly deteriorated by excessive working and had to be scrapped; there was an immediate demand for ordinary engineering work of the old type; and the British employers did not, in fact, set themselves at once to apply “mass production” to the making of steam engines and motor cars, agricultural implements and machinery generally, nor make any dramatic advances in its application to the production of sewing-machines, bicycles, and electrical apparatus. During 1919: the extensive readaptation of the machine-shops, and the great demand for new tools (especially machine-tools) facilitated the absorption, often in new situations, of all the skilled engineers. There was, accordingly, little difficulty in finding employment at good wages for practically all the skilled workmen, and (except for temporary dislocations arising in consequence of the disputes in coalmining, ironfounding, and other trades) the percentage of members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and other Unions of skilled craftsmen remained throughout the year at a minimum. The great bulk of the “dilutees,” including substantially all the women, received their discharge on the cessation of their jobs of “repetition work” on munitions of war, the employers preferring, in face of the immediate demand, to avoid trouble, to revert to the old methods and to get back their former staffs, rather than engage in the hazardous enterprise of reorganising their factory methods. Hence, taking the engineering industry as a whole, the men got back the work from the women; though not without some attempts at resistance by individual employers, which were not persisted in; and not without leaving the total number of women employed in 1920 in what might be deemed their own branches of the engineering industry apparently double that of 1913. Many of the male “dilutees” on discharge also reverted to other employment, but some proportion of them, who had acquired skill, and were members of various Unions admitting semi-skilled workers, found employment in engineering shops on particular machines or in particular jobs. There has apparently been a continuous increase in the proportion of machines demanding less than full skill (such as milling machines and small turret lathes), and therefore of “semi-skilled” men in employment, without (owing to the expansion of the industry as a whole) any reduction in the number of skilled men. In face of the great demand for output, and of the fact that hardly any members of the skilled Unions were unemployed, this fact did not evoke objection. The position as regards the Premium Bonus System or other form of “Payment by Results” was left unchanged. Few, if any, legal proceedings were actually taken against employers in the Munitions Courts under the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act. The employers and the Government were, during the first half of the year, in a state of alarm lest there should be a Labour uprising, which would seriously interfere with the resumption of business; and great care was exercised to avoid any disputes. Successive advances of wages were awarded to meet the rising cost of living, and all rates were “stabilised” by law, so as to prevent any employer from effecting a reduction, first until May 20, 1919, then until November 20, 1919, and finally until September 30, 1920; a new “Industrial Court” being set up by statute (Industrial Courts Act 1919) empowered to give non-obligatory decisions in any disputes that might be voluntarily referred to it—a measure from which the Parliamentary Labour Party succeeded in eliminating every implication of Compulsory Arbitration, Obligatory Awards, or the Abrogation of the Right to Strike. But the difficulties are not yet surmounted; and when there comes a slump in business, and skilled engineers find themselves unemployed, the Government pledge will be heard of again.
[683]See this noted in the report of the Parliamentary Committee in the Annual Report of the Trades Union Congress, 1917.
[684]The “Whitley Report,” published early in 1917, when possibilities of industrial and social “reconstruction” were much discussed, made a great stir, which was increased by the definite endorsement of its recommendations by the Government, and its energetic promotion of their adoption throughout British industry. Whilst significantly abstaining from any suggestion of “profit-sharing, co-partnership, or particular systems of wages,” the Report emphasised the importance of (a) “adequate organisation on the part of both employers and employed”; (b) the imperative need for a greater opportunity of participating in the discussion about and adjustment of “those parts of industry by which they are most affected” of the work-people in each occupation; (c) the subordination of any decisions to those of the Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations. Among the subjects to be dealt with by the hierarchy of National, District, and Works Councils or Committees were: (i.) “the better utilisation of the practical knowledge and experience of the work-people ... and for securing to them a greater share in and responsibility for the determination and observance of the conditions under which their work is carried on”; (ii.) “the settlement of the general principles governing the conditions of employment ... having regard to the need for securing to the work-people a share in the increased prosperity of the industry”; (iii.) the methods to be adopted for negotiations, adjusting wages, determining differences and “ensuring to the work-people the greatest possible security of earnings and employment”; (iv.) technical education, industrial research, utilisation of inventions, and improvement of processes; (v.) proposed legislation affecting the industry. After two years’ propagandist effort, it seems (1920) as if the principal industries, such as agriculture, transport, mining, cotton, engineering, or shipbuilding are unlikely to adopt the scheme; but two or three score trades have equipped themselves either with “Whitley Councils”—the District Councils and Works Committees are much more slow to form—or with “Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committees,” which may be regarded as provisional Councils, in such industries as pottery, house-building, woollen manufacture, hosiery, heavy chemicals, furniture-making, bread-baking, match-making, metallic bedstead manufacturing, saw-milling, and vehicle building. The Government found itself constrained, after an obstinate resistance by the heads of nearly all the departments, to institute the Councils throughout the public service. We venture on the prediction that some such scheme will commend itself in all nationalised or municipalised industries and services, including such as may be effectively “controlled” by the Government, though remaining nominally the property of the private capitalist—possibly also in the Co-operative Movement; but that it is not likely to find favour either in the well-organised industries (for which alone it was devised) or in those in which there are Trade Boards legally determining wages, etc.; or, indeed, permanently in any others conducted under the system of capitalist profit-making. See the series of “Whitley Reports,” Cd. 8606, 9001, 9002, 9085, 9099, and 9153; the Industrial Reports, Nos. 1 to 4, of the Ministry of Reconstruction; the able and well-informed article, “La politique de paix sociale en Angleterre,” by Élie Halévy, in Revue d’Économie Politique, No. 4 of 1919; Recommendation on the Whitley Report put forward by the Federation of British Industries, 1917; National Guilds or Whitley Councils?(National Guilds League), 1918. For the “Builders’ Parliament,” in many ways the most interesting of these Councils, though as yet achieving only schemes in which the employers, as a whole, do not concur, see A Memorandum on Industrial Self-Government, by Malcolm Sparkes; Masters and Men, a new Co-partnership, by Thomas Foster; and The Industrial Council for the Building Industry, by the Garton Foundation, 1919.
[685]It must be remembered that the conditions of the manual worker’s life dealt with by the Trade Unions up to 1894 included a wide range of material circumstances and moral considerations. Besides the maintenance of standard rates and methods of remuneration, the reduction of the normal day, and payment for overtime, we find among the objects of Trade Unions, as reported to the Commission, the prevention of stoppages from wages; the maintenance of the apprenticeship system and the keeping out of the trade all who are not qualified; the abolition of the character note; the prevention of victimisation; the provision of legal assistance to members in respect of compensation for accidents; the establishment of an agency through which employers may obtain efficient men; watching over the proceedings of local boards and law courts; the enforcement of the Factory Acts and other protective legislative enactments; the improvement of dietary scales and house and shop accommodation where workers have to live in; the collection and circulation of information on trade matters; the establishment of benefit funds for unemployment, disputes, sickness, accidents and death; the assistance of members anxious to migrate or emigrate; the establishment of “that reciprocal confidence which is so essential between workmen and masters,” and the promotion of arbitration and conciliation; the regulation of output; the promotion of friendly intercourse with workers of other countries; the assistance of other trades in times of difficulty; and political action—the support of Parliamentary and Municipal Labour candidates, of Trades Councils, of the Trades Union Congress, and of Labour newspapers. Some Unions decide to promote co-operative enterprise, “to secure the legal recognition of the natural rights of labourers to the produce of their toil,” whilst others promote the “moral, social, intellectual and professional advancement” of the working class. “Trade Societies,” state the rules of the Associated Shipwrights, “must be maintained as the guard of workmen against capitalists until some higher effort of productive co-operation has been inaugurated which shall secure to workers a more equitable share of the product of labour.”