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A MINIMUM WAGE for ALL in PROSPECT? 1910-1914 List of References 114

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A MINIMUM WAGE for ALL in PROSPECT? 1910-1914 List of References 114 University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/67053 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. A PLIMSOLL LINE FOR LABOUR? THE STATUTORY MINIMUM WAGE QUESTION IN BRITISH POLITICS, 1910-1939 by Stuart Carter A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social History University of Warwick, Centre for Social History September 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 DECLARATION 2 ABSTRACT 3 LIST of ABBREVIATIONS 4 INTRODUCTION 5 List of references 19 CHAPTER ONE 22 'AN EXPERIMENT AND A REVOLUTION'~ THE FIRST TRADE BOARDS - AN OVERVIEW List of references 72 CHAPTER TWO 79 A MINIMUM WAGE FOR ALL IN PROSPECT? 1910-1914 List of references 114 CHAPTER THREE 119 FROM 'TOTAL WAR' TO TOTAL MINIMUM WAGE COVERAGE, 1914-1918 List of references 148 CHAPTER FOUR 154 THE 'LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR' TRADE BOARDS CONSENSUS, 1918-1939 List of references 215 CHAPTER FIVE 226 A LIVING WAGE FIT FOR HEROES? INTER-WAR 'NATIONAL' MINIMUM WAGE POLICY INITIATIVES List of references 292 CONCLUSION 302 List of references 324 BIBLIOGRAPHY 325 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was made possible thanks to the award of an Economic and Social Research Council research students hip in 1997. I would also like to thank the University of Warwick Board of Graduate Studies for awarding me a Modern Records Centre bursary for three years in succession. I would like to thank my tutor, Professor Tony Mason, for his encouragement and good humour over the course of my study. In addition, I would like to place on record my appreciation of the friendly and helpful staff under the leadership of Mrs Christine Woodland at the Modern Records Centre. I am very grateful for the assistance of Mark Dobson, Jonathan Gardner, Kim Huan and Ganesh Pathmanayagam regarding the technical presentation of this thesis, and my parents for proofreading my draft chapters. 1 DECLARATION This thesis is entirely my own work, and has not been submitted for a degree at another university. Where I have relied on other works, the appropriate reference is listed at the foot of each chapter. All books cited were published in London unless stated otherwise. Material contained in Chapter Two, relating to the 1912 Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act and the agricultural minimum wage proposals of 1913- 1914, is based on work contained in my unpublished MA dissertation, "An experiment and a revolution. The issue of minimum wages in the Edwardian period" (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1996), Chapters Three and Four, respectively. 2 ABSTRACT This study charts the development of statutory minimum wage policy between 1906-1939. Unlike other works touching upon the minimum wage theme, this study makes extensive use of trade union and employers' organisation records. Indeed, the fate of official minimum wage policy can only be understood by giving full consideration to the views of the two sides of industry, especially with regard to the inter-war period. The sensitivities of employers' organisations and the TUC played a crucial role in influencing the character of government policy in this field. Trade boards, representative of employers and workers within a strictly defined low-paying sector, were a 'lowest common denominator' minimum wage policy that suited the interests of representative organisations on both sides of industry. The TUC, never wholly comfortable with the notion of government 'interference' in the unions' sphere of wage-rate determination, recognised that in sectors where organisation was difficult to foster, a legal minimum rate could help safeguard the wage standards of all workers, including the higher-skilled. Likewise, employers may have been wary of 'red tape'; but those suffering from undercutting by non-federated rivals appreciated a basic legal 'floor' to wages. Thus, in those sectors where voluntary collective bargaining could not ensure minimum standards, both sides of industry could embrace trade boards as a substitute. Thus, in seeking to account for the absence of a uniform national minimum wage until 1998, the attitudes of both sides of industry, and the TUC in particular, should be borne in mind as much as inertia on the part of government. Chapters One to Three provide a chronological analysis of the development of minimum wage policy between 1906-1918. Chapters Four and Five cover the inter-war period, dealing with the vicissitudes of trade boards and the unsuccessful fate of 'universal' minimum wage policies, respectively. 3 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ASE Amalgamated Society of Engineers AST&T Amalgamated Society of Tailors and Tailoresses AUCO Amalgamated Union of Clothing Operatives Cd./Cmd. Command Paper CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain EEF Engineering Employers Federation FBI Federation of British Industries H.C. Deb. House of Commons Parliamentary Debates ('Hansard') H.L. Deb. House of Lords Parliamentary Debates (,Hansard') HMSO His/Her Majesty's Stationary Office ILO International Labour Organisation ILP Independent Labour Party nc Joint Industrial ['Whitley'] Council MFGB Miners' Federation of Great Britain MP Member of Parliament MRC University of Warwick, Modern Records Centre MSS Manuscripts NAC (Independent Labour Party) National Administrative Council NALRWU National Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers Union NASL National Anti-Sweating League NCEO National Confederation of Employers Organisations NFWW National Federation of Women Workers NIC National Industrial Council NUGW National Union of General Workers PJC (National Industrial Conference) Provisional Joint Committee PRO Public Record Office TB(E)CC Trade Boards (Employers') Consultative Council T&GWU Transport and General Workers Union TTB Tailoring Trade Board TUC Trades Union Congress (TUC)TBAC (Trades Union Congress) Trade Boards Advisory Council USRC Unionist Social Reform Committee Vol. Volume WCMF Wholesale Clothing Manufacturers' Federation WR Walter Runciman (Collection of Papers) WTUL Women's Trade Union League WWl World War One WW2 World War Two 4 INTRODUCTION Britain's first statutory national minimum wage was enacted in 1998.1 This achievement may be interpreted by contemporaries as yet another instance of Britain belatedly following the lead of European Union states in the establishment of basic minimum rights for workers. However, it is 'something of a well-kept secret" that Britain was the first modern nation in the Northern Hemisphere to initiate state intervention in wage-rate determination. The Trade Boards Act of 1909 established boards comprised of equal numbers of employers' and workers' representatives, together with independent members, for the purpose of fixing minimum wages in a handful of notoriously 'sweated' trades. Subsequently, trade boards were expanded significantly both in function and in number after 1918, and again after 1945, when they became wages councils. In fact, this study will demonstrate that wages boards provided the template for all peacetime legal minimum wage policy initiatives in Britain until the abolition of the wages councils in 1993. Historians have tended to neglect the question of minimum wage regulation in favour of analysing the formation, development and effect of state welfare provision during the twentieth century.' The modest coverage of the first Trade Boards Act, together with the relatively quiet and unspectacular development of official minimum wage policy over the following decades, probably accounts for this oversight. Indeed, from the outset, the minimum wage question was often 'crowded out' from party political discourse by other welfare policy initiatives. More widely-applicable welfare reforms such as 5 Asquith's provision for non-contributory Old Age Pensions in 1908 and Lloyd George's National Insurance Act of 1911 naturally won more attention from Edwardians than the trade boards. Minimum wage legislation did not even feature as the most pressing concern for Churchill at the Board of Trade in 1909; he and his officials focussed primarily on plans for labour exchanges and the unemployment aspect of National Insurance. The Trade Boards Act was notable for breaking a widely-held taboo concerning the appropriate level of governmental responsibility for the welfare of its citizens whilst at the same time enjoying cross-party Front Bench endorsement in parliament on account of its limited and experimental nature. However, it was not unique in this respect; the non-pauperising 1906 Education (Provision of Meals) Act was of a similar character. Nevertheless, the decision by the state to guarantee a minimum wage to certain workers in private sector employment represented a greater challenge to conventional principles of political economy than any of the more famous Edwardian welfare reforms. This was recognised by R.H. Tawney, who asserted that, the silent abandonment of the doctrine, held for three generations with an almost religious intensity, that wages should be settled, as it was said, by free competition, and by free competition alone, is one of the most remarkable changes in economic opinion which has taken place in the last hundred years." In addition to shaking the foundations of Victorian political economy,
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