A Doctor of Philosophy Thesis in History by ROBERT FITZGERALD
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The industrial relations of welfare capitalism in Britain, 1870 1939. a Doctor of Philosophy thesis in History by ROBERT FITZGERALD (Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, London University) March 1986. ProQuest Number: 10090117 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10090117 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract of Thesis. Some historians have depicted industrial welfare as of small significance in the development of British industrial relations. This thesis contains case-studies of many firms and industries which illustrate the prevalence of company welfare provision between 1846-1939 and its usefulness to employers as a labour strategy. While there have been works on specific welfare schemes, this is a monographic study of industrial welfare enabling comparisons to be made between very different industries. The thesis also identifies the formative influences upon the organisation of company provision over a broad time span. Highly capitalised industries needed to invest more in the stability and reliability of their workforces than other trades. Moreover, market control enabled companies to exercise a greater degree of forward planning in the management of production, capital and men. As natural monopolies and the first large-scale enterprises, railways were innovators in industrial management and in the provision of industrial welfare. In more competitive trades, the passing of small firm and ex gratia paternalism and its replacement by more systematic welfare schemes usually followed the formation of large, corporate firms from the 1890s onwards. Changes in the organisation of industrial welfare tended to follow the establishment of the managerial bureaucracies and structures suited to the large company. The thesis argues that profitsharing can only be understood as an element of industrial welfare provision. It shows that, rather than welfare being mainly concerned with factory conditions, employers were more interested in the questions of income maintenance, sick pay and old age pensions. Consequently, employers lobbied Parliament to prevent their industrial welfare schemes from being made redundant by social legislation. By influencing the final form of government proposals, they ensured until the Second World War that company provision was able to continue as part of state welfare schemes. Industrial Relations and Welfare Capitalism in Britain, 1846-19 39 . Chapter 1 Industrial Relations, the Company, and Welfare. p. 8 (i) Introduction: industrial relations and welfare capitalism (ii) Collective Bargaining and Scientific Management (iii) Paternalism, Industrial Welfare and the Company (iv) Industrial Welfare as a Labour Strategy (v) Markets and Case-studies. Chapter 2 The Railways, Monopoly, and Labour Management. p.53 (i ) Introduction (ii) The Railways and Corporate Management (iii) Internal Labour Markets and Industrial Welfare (iv) The Railways and Industrial Welfare, 1846-1914 (a) Introduction (b) Origins (c) Employers Liability and Actuarial Valuation (d) Collective Bargaining and National Insurance (e) Summary (V) Rationalisation and Industrial Welfare, 1914-1939 (vi) Conclusion. Chapter 3 Industry and Labour in the Metropolitan Gas Industry. p.106 (i) Introduction (ii) Municipal Regulation and Rationalisation (iii) Work Discipline and Industrial Welfare (iv) The Extension of Industrial Welfare (V) Conclusion. Chapter 4 The Development of the Large-scale Enterprise and Company-based Industrial Relations Policies in the Iron and Steel Industry. p.152 (i) Introduction (ii) Economic Development, Corporate Management and Welfare Policy (iii) Industrial Welfare and the Steel Industry, 1870-1914: (a) Company Practice (b) Social Welfare Legislation (c) Summary (iv) World War One and State Intervention (V) The Corporate Company and Industrial Wei fare(I):the Tariff and Profitability (V) The Corporate Company and Industrial Welfare (II): 1918-1930 (v) The Corporate Economy and Industrial Welfare(III), 1930-1939 : (a) The United Steel Companies (b) Dorman-Long (c) Richard Thomas and Company (d) Stewart and Lloyds (V) The Corporate Economy and Industrial Welfare(IV): Summary (vi) Conclusion. Chapter 5 Systemat1c Management and Industrial Welfare in the Chemicals Industry. p. 226 (i) Introduction (i i) Unilever (iii) Imperial Chemicals Industries (iv) Conclusion. Chapter 6: The Labour Question in______the Breweries p. 269 (i) Introduction (ii) Brewery Paternalism (iii) Conclusion. Chapter 7: The Place of Industrial Welfare in British Industry. p. 290 ( i ) Introduction (ii) Textiles (iii) Coalmining (iv) ShipbuiId ing (V) The Engineering Industry (vi) The Materials Users (vii) The Electrical Goods Industry (viii) The Motor Car Industry (ix) Food and Tobacco (X) The Boot and Shoe Industry (xi) Conclusion. Chapter 8: The Labour Copartnership Association and the Industrial Welfare Society. p.384 (i) Introduct ion (ii) Labour Copartnership Association (iii) Industrial Welfare Society (iv) Conclusion. Chapter 9; Industry and Social Reform. p. 413 Introduction Employers' Liability, 1880-1906 (iii) The Shop Clubs Act 1902, and the Liberal Welfare Reforms, 1908-11 ( iv ) The Whitley Council Scheme and the National Industrial Alliance ( V ) Housing and Education (vi) The Unemployment Insurance Act 1920 and the Pensions Act 1925 (vii) Conclusion. Epilogue . p.483 ***** Tables. Tab1e I : Railwaymen's Friendly Socities and Savings Banks, 1833-1930. p.91 Table II: Average Weekly Wages of Manual Workers on an Industry by Industry Basis, 1886-1930. p.485 Table 11 : Employment Statistics of Industrial Manual Workers, 1871-1931. p.486 Table IV: Company Personnel Organisation (1952). p.487 Table V: Average Per Company Cost of State and Industrial Welfare Services in Britain in 1954 (based on the experience of Bakelite Ltd). p.488 Biblioqraphy Primary Sources. p. 489 Secondary Sources. p. 495 * * * * Preface. I am thankful to a number of institutions which allowed me to research their archives and which freely offered their time and help. These are: the British Steel Corporation's Record Offices, Unilever PLC, Imperial Chemicals Industries PLC, the Brewers' Society, the Industrial Participation Association, and the Industrial Society. I am, of course, also indebted to public institutions, like the Public Record Office, the Greater London Record Office, the Westminister Record Office, the British Library, the University of London Library, and the British Library of Political and Economic Science. The renamed Economic and Social Research Council should also be acknowledged for its role as a financer of research, and for, in particular, funding the undertaking of this thesis. Lastly and above all, the knowledgeable and persevering supervision I received from Dr John Turner, now at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, receives my special gratitude. Chapter 1 . Industrial Relations, the Company, and Welfare. ( i). Introduction :_____industrial relations and welfare capitali sm. This thesis assesses the place of industrial welfare in British labour management from 1846-1939. It concentrates on the role of the company and its internal organisation rather than upon the growth of trades unionism, collective bargaining, and battles over wages and hours. Businessmen use many techniques to restrain industrial conflict, from supervisory control, the deskilling of work, and collective bargaining, to reliance on slack in the labour market. But the importance of welfare in industrial relations has more often been overlooked, with the exception of the pioneering research of Joseph Melling into specific welfare schemes.^ This thesis aims to present a monographic study of industrial welfare over the mciety years before the Second World War. There are few works about the development of British management practice, and the existence of industrial welfare poses questions about the nature of firms and their labour policies. The behaviour of companies and employers cannot be understood with reference only to the market theories of neo-classical economists, which depict employers and workers as "rational" agents seeking maximum reward for minimum 1. Cf. Melling in the Bibliography. effort.^ According to such theories, employers and workers would have bargained with each other as equals in the market-place to determine the division between profits and wages. Employers were merely profit-maximisers, refusing to produce beyond the point where factor costs became greater than the revenue from each subsequent article produced. Competition forced employers to hire and fire workers as the fluctuations in market forces dictated. It is no coincidence that the theories of neo-classical economics were evolved during the 19th Century, when the British economy was characterised by small competitive firms and notorious trade cycles. Men, of course, were never simply materialistic rationalists, and competition between companies rarely reflected the explanatory models of economic text-books. Because