Description
By Frank Fields and Steve Winyard
“Wages Councils, or as they were first called, Trade Boards, were established in 1909 in an attempt to radically improve the wages of workers employed in certain of the sweated trades. Today there are 53 covering some three-and-a-quarter million workers. The record of this particular method of statutory wage regulation has been very mixed and this essay looks at the successes and failures of the last 65 years. The first section examines the effect that three of the earliest
Trade Boards had on earnings in their industries. Section two traces the record of Trade Boards during the inter-war period. The third section examines at greater length their very dismal performance in the post-war period, particularly over the last ten years, whilst the final section outlines a programme of reform which would allow Wages Councils to play a significant part in an overall strategy against
low pay.”
