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- Title
Hours of Labour: Negotiating Industrial Legislation in Britain, 1919-39.
- Authors
Lowe, Rodney
- Abstract
This article focuses on the national industrial negotiations over hours of labor in Great Britain during 1919 to 1939. In 1919, in the flush of post-war idealism, government, employers, and trade unions all pledged themselves to the legal enforcement of a 48-hour week. In the 1920s, a decade of industrial confrontation and reconciliation, the failure to realize these pledges generated much political friction. Finally, during the world slump of the early 1930s, the T.U.C. championed the 40-hour week as a remedy for unemployment, a policy supported by the International Labour Organization and enacted later by other industrialized countries, including France and the U.S. These negotiations, despite their continuity, have so far evaded serious historical analysis for two major reasons. First, they were abortive. From a mountain of effort only one small, and rather perverse, mouse emerged, the Coal Mines Act of 1926, increasing, not decreasing, the legal length of the miners' day. Secondly the documentation is excessive and often of unrelenting tedium.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; BUSINESS negotiation; LABOR unions; WORKING hours; ASSOCIATIONS, institutions, etc.; LABOR laws
- Publication
Economic History Review, 1982, Vol 35, Issue 2, p254
- ISSN
0013-0117
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2595018