Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/775

Rh the war. This, however, was partly due to the assumption that the war would be of short duration; and when it appeared that this was not to be the case, and further that food prices and employers' profits, particularly at first in the shipping trade, were rising very rapidly, the trade unions changed their policy, and by the spring of 1915 it may be said that as far as wage claims were concerned, the industrial truce had come to an end. All trade unions began to put forward claims for increased wages, these claims, for the most part, being based on the rise in the cost of living; and although in the first two years it was not invariably held to be a sufficient ground and wages rose comparatively slowly, by 1917 it was .generally accepted, and arbitrators and Government tribunals were usually willing to consider claims based upon it.

Very early in the war the system of granting wage advances in the form of " war bonuses " was introduced, the railwaymen being the first to accept it. A " war bonus " was an advance explicitly granted owing to " the abnormal conditions arising out of the war," and it was argued, though not stated in any award, that " war bonuses" ought 'therefore to lapse automatically when these con- ditions were removed. The trade unions never accepted this in- terpretation, and both during and after the war negotiations were continually in progress for converting war bonuses into permanent wages. Certain permanent advances were in fact granted, usually in the early stages of the war, before the system of war bonuses had become general, but subsequently it became the rule for all wage ad- vances in the majority of trades to be granted in the form of war bonuses, which amounted to anything from 20 to 40 shillings a week in the skilled trades. War bonuses were generally granted nationally to all members of the particular trade concerned, on a flat rate. This conceded an important point in trade union prin- ciple. It had always been the object of most trade unions, partic- ularly those whose members are paid by time, to establish a national minimum wage or guaranteed rate for their trade. Before the war, national minima, legal or otherwise, were rare; in the better organized trades, distinct minima had been secured, but in many cases there was no standard at all, and individual wages had to be negotiated with individual employers. The war, particularly in its later stages, ave the trade unions an opportunity for standardizing wages. ctual national minima were not secured in many instances, but in a number of trades, notably in building, printing, baking, tramways, gas and electricity supply, several area rates were fixed which between them covered the whole country, and in far more the prin- ciple of national advances or war bonuses, applying equally to every worker in the industry, was secured. This was the case, for example, with all subsequent advances to miners, all advances to railwaymen, and practically all advances in the munitions industries. The volume of wage negotiations undertaken by trade unions during the war was naturally enormous, but most of it was detailed negotia- tion for separate trades or branches of a trade. Towards the end of the war there was a movement to consolidate all war advances in the permanent wage rates, and to establish new minima for each industry; but the trade slump which began in 1920 strengthened the 1 resistance of the employers to the principle, and many set-backs '. were recorded.

From 1915 onwards the Government began to make more and

, more use of the trade unions both in political and industrial ques-

j tions. The general course of events was for the Government to initi-

ate a particular piece of legislation without the cooperation of the

trade unions, and then to amend its administration in order to ad-

mit the trade unions as partners. Thus the recruiting _of men for

the army was originally entrusted entirely to the administration of

the staffs of the War Office, but it was found that this led to the

crippling of essential industries by the sudden withdrawal of large

bodies of skilled men, and also gave rise to a great deal of industrial

unrest. Accordingly, trade unionists were invited to sit on the im-

portant committees dealing with recruitment, and in most of the

chief industries the Government adopted the method of discussing


 * recruitment with the representative bodies of employers and work-


 * men. The mines, in particular, were practically excluded from the

I operations of the Military Service Acts, special colliery recruiting

I courts, composed of representatives of miners. and mine-owners,

with a Government chairman, being set up under the authority of

the Home Office, to deal with the recruitment of miners for the

army. In the munitions industries a scheme was put into operation

in 1917 under which certain trade unions catering for skilled workers

were allowed to issue " trade cards " to their members protecting

them from military service, but this scheme met with a great deal

of opposition from other trade unions as well as from the em-

ployers, and was dropped. In addition to participating in recruiting,

trade unions during the war acted as the defenders of members

whom they believed to be unjustly taken into the army, and con-

cerned themselves with other cognate questions, such as the securing

of civil rights to enlisted men.

_ In the case of Government control of industry, the same progres- sion is visible. The early cases of Government control were ad- ministered by civil servants, without official cooperation either by trade unions or employers' associations. Later the Government adopted the principle of consultation of the trades concerned_through associations of employers, and many industries were administered under Government control by boards consisting of civil servants and

representatives of commercial interests. This was the most frequent form of control; but in two important industries, cotton and woollen textiles, the trade unions were taken into partnership. The Wool Control Board was set up in the autumn of 1917, after several experiments had failed, and consisted of eleven representatives each of the employers, the trade unions, and the War Office Con- tracts Department. It had a free hand in organizing the civilian trade in wool and in allocating supplies of wool bought by the Government to the various firms. The Cotton Control Board, set up a short time previously, was composed in a somewhat similar way. It administered the Raw Cotton Order, prohibiting the purchase of cotton except under licence, restricted the amount of machinery which was allowed to run upon work other than Govern- ment orders, and when the supplies of cotton were insufficient to keep all members of the industry in employment, the Board levied the firms which were working full time in order to pay allowances to unemployed workmen, thus putting into practice a principle on which many trade unions insist, namely that each industry should provide for the maintenance of its own reserve of labour. The Food Ministry, again, when reorganized by Lord Rhondda, set up a Consumers' Advisory Council, on which the trade unions were officially represented, and Food Vigilance Committees and War Pensions Committees were among the local bodies to which they regularly sent delegates.

These experiences of partnership with the trade unions, and the existence of the control of industry propaganda, induced the Govern- ment, when in the spring of 1917 industrial relations appeared to be very much embittered, to appoint a committee to consider means of improving the relations between employers and employed. The report of this committee known as the Whitley Report recom- mended that in each of the well-organized industries joint standing industrial councils, representative of employers' associations and trade unions, should be set up to discuss all matters affecting the industry. The Government officially adopted the report (though for some considerable time it refused to set up Whitley Councils in the Civil Service, the Post Office, and other Government establishments) and between 1917 and 1919 50 or 60 such councils were set up, but they did not produce much permanent result. For trade unionism, their chief importance lies in the fact that they brought large ac- cessions of membership to some unions (since no workman could be represented on an industrial council, save through a trade union), and that they facilitated the fixing of national and area minimum rates. They were also used by the Government as the regular chan- nels for disseminating information and receiving advice from the trades concerned. The trade unions, however, showed no great enthusiasm, discerning in them possible taints of profit-sharing and compulsory arbitration, to both of which trade union policy is definitely opposed, and were inclined to be definitely favourable to them only in State-owned industries. So long as wages and profits continued to rise no very serious disputes occurred, but as soon as the fall began several councils were abandoned owing to disagreements on wage questions (see INDUSTRIAL COUNCILS).

A few months after the issue of the Whitley Report, the passage of the Corn Production Act led to a great revival of trade unionism among the agricultural labourers, who since the failure of Joseph Arch in the 'seventies had been almost untouched by trade unions. The Corn Production Act guaranteed a minimum price to the farm and a minimum wage to the farm- workers; and boards, representa- tive of the employers and the three trade unions organizing farm- workers, the National Union of Agricultural Labourers, the Workers' Union and the Scottish Farm Servants' Union, were appointed to determine what the minimum should be in the different counties. The work done by these trade unions in forcing up the minimum rates and in assisting their members to claim arrears of pay due to them under the Act, brought them in a large number of new mem- bers up to the time of the repeal of the Act and the disbandment of the wages boards in the autumn of 1921. The Trade Boards Act was also drastically amended in the following year, with the result of extending legal minimum rates, fixed by tribunals representing em- ployers and workers, to between 50 and 60 new trades and stimulat- ing trade union organization within these trades.

The only other development of importance to the trade union movement during the war was the revision, early in 1918, of the constitution of the political Labour party, which led to an extension of the political activities of the trade unions. Under the new con- stitution the trade unions were, as before, the main constituents of the national Labour party, but more attention than before was given to the organization of local parties in the constituencies, and a number of trade unions took part in the formation of local Labour parties or in adding a political wing to the activities of trade councils. Nearly every trade union had by this time taken a ballot of its members enabling it to establish a fund for political action, arid the results of this were seen in the increased contributions, local and national, of trade unions to the Labour party, and the number of Labour candidates, supported largely by trade union funds, who stood in the general election of 1918. No trade union which has set up a political fund has applied that fund to the assistance of any other party than the Labour party.

After the Armistice. Up to the end of the war no further develop- ment of special importance took place. The trade unions were