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Electricity before Nationalisation pp 257–288Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Growth of Industrial Relations

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Abstract

The expansion of the supply industry, and especially of its commercial and distribution sides, made increasing calls on the labour market in the inter-war years. There was a ready pool of unemployed labour from which it could draw unskilled men, and in most areas supply undertakings had little difficulty in attracting skilled craftsmen to the secure and relatively well paid jobs in the industry. For most of the inter-war years there were skilled electricians unemployed and on the books of the Labour Exchanges, though later in the period cutbacks in apprenticeship training and growing competition from the expanding engineering trades reduced the available pool. Estimates of the number of workers employed by the industry are difficult to interpret in that they sometimes include those employed in railway or tramway power-stations but exclude some local authority employees. The numbers directly employed by the supply undertakings on generation and distribution probably grew from around 20,000 in 1907 to 36,000 in 1922 and 109,000 in 1938.1 In addition there were some Town Hall staff working on accounts for the supply undertakings, and perhaps several thousand men directly employed by the undertakings on capital construction projects.2 Even when this additional employment is considered, however, it is evident that the industry was capital- rather than labour-intensive.

Speaking broadly the unions have been of very great assistance. We know they will honour their agreements.

An electricity supply employer reported in J. Hilton, J. J. Mallon, S. Rowntree, Sir Arthur Salter et al (eds) Are Trade Unions Obstructive? (1935) p. 131

… an essential condition of securing a permanent improvement in the relations between employers and employed is that there should be adequate organisation on the part of both employers and workpeople.

Ministry of Reconstruction, (Whitley) Sub-Committee on Relations between Employers and Employed, Interim Report on Joint Standing Industrial Councils, Cmd 8606 (1917) para. 23

The course to be avoided is that followed in connection with the much advertised, but highly ineffective, Joint Industrial Councils, which began as parliaments, and not infrequently continued, when they continued at all, as tea-parties …

R. H. Tawney, Equality, 1931, p. 264

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Notes on the Text

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UK

    Leslie Hannah

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  1. Leslie Hannah
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© 1979 The Electricity Council

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Hannah, L. (1979). The Growth of Industrial Relations. In: Electricity before Nationalisation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03443-7_8

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