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10 - Apprentice Strikes, Pay Structure, and Training in the Twentieth-Century UK Metalworking Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Paul Ryan
Edited by
Clair Brown ,
Barry J. Eichengreen  and
Michael Reich
Clair Brown
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Barry J. Eichengreen
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Michael Reich
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Summary

“… inappropriate wage structures contribute to labor shortages … compressed wage differentials depress the incentive not only of workers to take training in higher skills, but of management to offer such training.”

(Ulman 1968: 372)

INTRODUCTION

A noteworthy feature of the history of both vocational training and industrial relations in the United Kingdom is the high strike propensity of apprentices (i.e., young people engaged in work-based learning for craft occupations) in the metalworking industry during the middle of the last century. Between 1937 and 1964, seven actions launched by apprentices were sufficiently large and protracted to be termed strike movements, in that they spread across various districts, drew in many thousands of young people, and lasted for several weeks. In all cases, the apprentices acted largely autonomously, primarily in pursuit of higher pay for young males, the employment category that they dominated. The strikes were exceptional in that, although they had antecedents, they were largely confined to metalworking, and they had few counterparts in other sectors and countries with apprenticeship training, including the United States.

Although some of the apprentice disputes have been discussed by social historians, they have been largely ignored in the literature on industrial relations, industrial training and vocational education. One reason for their neglect may be that their interpretation is not straightforward. From an economics–industrial-relations standpoint, the strikes may be viewed as just another category of industrial dispute, involving standard reciprocal threats of economic damage.

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Labor in the Era of Globalization , pp. 317 - 350
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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