Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T18:30:17.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Origins of Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

V. L. Allen
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Trade unionism has always involved the settlement of industrial disputes by negotiations between workers' representatives and employers. On occasions in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries demands made by workers or employers were granted without question by the other side; at other times the demands were rejected out of hand and this was acquiesced in by the other side. In between these extremes lay a number of possible outcomes. Demands were sometimes conceded after strikes or lockouts or they were moderated and then accepted. The precise outcome depended upon the state of the labour market, and hence the degree of labour organization, and the cost position of the employers. These factors not only varied over time but differed in their intensity between industries and firms at any one point of time. The extreme situations occurred at high and low levels of employment. In the competition for labour, which a high level of employment implies, employers readily gave way to collective demands but as commodity markets deteriorated and the volume of production declined, they at first resisted claims which would have increased labour costs and then deliberately set out to cut wages, lengthen hours and intensify work. Workers commonly resisted initial attempts to reduce labour costs so that a spate of strikes and lockouts ensued. At the onset of the depression in 1819 and at the first suggestion of wage reductions the Lancashire miners, the North Staffordshire potters and the Nottingham framework knitters all responded by striking. The Glasgow cotton spinners resisted wage cuts in 1837 as did the London building workers and miners and textile workers in the midlands and north in 1841 and the typographical workers in 1846. Frequently, however, these disputes resulted in compromise settlements which were superseded by other compromises as trade conditions got worse.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , August 1964 , pp. 237 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1964

References

page 239 note 1 Armytage, W. H. G., Mundella, A. J. 1825–1897. The Liberal Background to the Labour Movement, p. 33.Google Scholar

page 239 note 2 Felkin, William, A History of the Machine Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacture, London 1867, p. 471.Google Scholar

page 239 note 3 Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1859, p. 653.Google Scholar

page 239 note 4 Sharp, I. G., Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration in Great Britain, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

page 240 note 1 The London Compositor, 1785–1900, edited by Howe, Ellic, p. 266.Google Scholar

page 240 note 2 Ibid., p. 248.

page 240 note 3 Capital and Labour, April, 1874, p. 106.Google Scholar

page 240 note 4 Ibid., September 1875, p. 496.

page 240 note 5 Ibid., 27th October 1875, p. 621.

page 242 note 1 The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Trades' Societies and Strikes, 1860, p. 245.Google Scholar

page 242 note 2 Lord Penrhyn to the President of the Board of Trade; see Allen, V. L., Trade Unions and the Government, p. 52.Google Scholar

page 243 note 1 Crompton, Henry, Industrial Conciliation, pp. 33–34 and 48.Google Scholar

page 243 note 2 Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1868, p. 525.Google Scholar

page 243 note 3 Ibid., pp. 579–592.

page 243 note 4 Crompton, op. cit., p. 59.

page 243 note 5 Phelps, E. H. Brown reiterates these claims in The Growth of British Industrial Relations, p. 126.Google Scholar

page 243 note 6 Wells, F. A., The British Hosiery Trade, p. 160.Google Scholar

page 244 note 1 Cf. Church, Roy, Technological Change and the Hosiery Board, in: Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, Vol. 15, No. 2, 05 1963, p. 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 244 note 2 Wells, op.cit., p. 160.

page 244 note 3 Felkin, op.cit., p. 484.

page 244 note 4 Armytage, op.cit., p. 32.

page 244 note 5 Nottingham Review, 21st September 1860, p. 5.Google Scholar

page 245 note 1 In the 3 years ending June, 1860, 57 lace houses went bankrupt; Cuthbert, Norman H., The Lace Makers' Society, p. 41n.Google Scholar

page 245 note 2 Ibid., p. 42.

page 245 note 3 Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, Phyllis, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, p. 239.Google Scholar

page 246 note 1 Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1868, p. 577.Google Scholar

page 246 note 2 The Times, 2nd May, 1868.Google Scholar

page 246 note 5 Ibid., 18th April 1868.

page 247 note 1 Ibid., 5th May 1868.

page 247 note 2 Ibid., 16th March, 1868; also Williams, J. E., The Derbyshire Miners, pp. 115–117.Google Scholar

page 247 note 3 Cf. Odber, A. J., The Origins of Industrial Peace: The Manufactured Iron Trade of the North of England, in: Oxford Economic Papers, vol. 3, No. 2, 06 1951.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 247 note 4 Ibid., p. 207.

page 248 note 1 Quoted by Williams, op. cit., p. 140.

page 248 note 2 Cf. Welbourne, E., The Miners' Unions of Northumberland and DurhamGoogle Scholar. After the strike against the yearly bond in 1869 in Durham there were no large strikes or lockouts which officially involved the unions in Northumberland and Durham until the late 1870s.

page 249 note 1 South Yorkshire had more troubles than the north east coalfields. Neither the miners nor the coal-owners operated arbitration so consistently and in 1874 there was a lock-out of 23,000 miners over a wage reduction. But even so, Yorkshire was an area of industrial peace compared with the coalfields on the other side of the Pennines.

page 249 note 2 Arnot, R. Page, A History of the Scottish Miners, p. 54.Google Scholar

page 249 note 3 Capital and Labour, 8th April, 1874Google Scholar.

page 249 note 4 Capital and Labour, 11th March 1874, p. 39.Google Scholar

page 249 note 5 Cf. Cole, G. D. H., Some Notes on British Trade Unionism in the Third Quarter of the Nineteenth Century, in: International Review for Social History, vol. II, 1937, pp. 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In addition to a large number of local strikes, the Amalgamated Association of Miners was rarely left without a major strike or lock-out to finance. It grew out of a 6 weeks' strike in South Lancashire in 1868. (The Times, 16th March 1868 and various dates till 5th May 1868Google Scholar). A 13 months' strike for union recognition in Burnley was a constant drain. (The Times, 8th October, 1873Google Scholar; Capital and Labour, 6th May, 1874, p. 229Google Scholar and 26th August 1874, p. 612). In 1873 there was a lockout for 3 months in South Wales (The Times for various dates between 7th January 1873 and 19th March 1873). In the same year there was a lock-out in North Warwickshire (The Times 7th January 1873). In 1874 there was a 4 months' strike in South Staffordshire (The Times, 11th July 1874Google Scholar), a 7 weeks' strike in South West Lancashire (The Times, 6th October, 1874 and 10th November 1874Google Scholar), and a 7 weeks' strike in the Forest of Dean (The Times, 1st January 1875Google Scholar). 1875 was dominated by a 5 months' strike in South Wales (The Times, 29th December, 1874Google Scholar; 2nd January, 1875 and various dates to 28th and 29th May, 1875). By the summer of 1875 the union was virtually insolvent. It merged with the Miners' National Association in August, 1875.

page 250 note 1 Welbourne, E., The Miners' Unions of Northumberland and Durham, p. 160.Google Scholar

page 250 note 2 Brown, A. J. Youngson, Trade Union Policy in the Scots Coalfields, 1855–1885, in: Economic History Review, vol. VI, No. 2, 1958, pp. 42–44.Google Scholar

page 250 note 3 Capital and Labour, 13th October 1875Google Scholar.

page 250 note 4 Cuthbert, op.cit., p. 45.

page 250 note 5 Church, op.cit., p. 58.

page 250 note 6 Capital and Labour, 5th May, 1875, p. 195.Google Scholar

page 251 note 1 Ibid., 4th March, 1874, p. 85.

page 251 note 2 Ibid., 6th May, 1874, p. 224.

page 251 note 3 Ibid., 17th March, 1875, p. 55. A similar view was expressed by Thomas Ellison, Judge of the Sheffield County Court, in 1879 when he arbitrated in a Yorkshire mining dispute. He awarded that wages should not be reduced, “provided always that this award is not intended, and shall not be construed, to restrict or in any way interfere with the right of the owners to close at their discretion all or any of the collieries within the said area…” (Williams, op.cit., p. 163).

page 251 note 4 Church, op.cit., p. 58, and Crompton, op.cit., p. 37.

page 251 note 5 Cuthbert, op.cit., p. 43.

page 252 note 1 Capital and Labour, 18th March, 1874, p. 63.Google Scholar

page 252 note 2 Welbourne, op.cit., p. 166. When Thomas Ellison made his award in the 1879 York shire mining dispute he admitted “that the wages now received by the miners are barely sufficient to afford a decent maintenance of themselves and families” and awarded ac cordingly. He went on, however, to concede to the employers the right to break the award if it proved too costly (Williams, op.cit., p. 163).

page 253 note 1 For example coal-owners considered that miners should bear part of the cost of administering the 1872 Mines Regulation Act.

page 253 note 2 Capital and Labour, 23rd February, 1876. p. 140.Google Scholar

page 254 note 1 Pollard, Sidney, History of Labour in Sheffield, p. 134.Google Scholar