Labour Relations

Abstract

The Commission was, after the state, the largest employer in Great Britain, its staffrising to a total of 880 503 by 1953. The range of skills and occupations it covered was enormous, and it had inherited a great variety of labour relationships, including both statutory and nonstatutory negotiating machinery. It had to deal with a large number of trade unions, and there were no exclusive relationships between individual Executives and individual unions. The National Union of Railwaymen, for instance, had members among the staffs of each of the Executives.¹ In some cases unions were federated for negotiating purposes, as in the Railway Shopmen’s National Council: in others, a single grade of worker might be in either of two unions, as in the case of railway footplate staff. The great majority of the labour force was unionised; but acquisition of some road haulage businesses had swelled the element of non-union labour.