Preliminary Programme

Health and safety legislation in the UK up to 1974 can be characterized as: partial coverage of the workforce; limited scope of legislation; snail-like progress; advances often conceded grudgingly; coverage of many industries and many subjects historically very recent.
Contrary to many views that unions did not generally take health and safety seriously, for most of the period (starting particularly with the coalminers in the 1840s) the most enduring, and often the most important, force for health and safety regulation has been trade unionism. The absence of trade union pressure either slows down or reduces the likelihood of change. The method of ‘legal enactment’ rather than collective bargaining (using strikes) has been central, with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) a permanent lobby for health and safety legislation.
The experience of the 1945–70 period would confirm both the slowness of legislation and the central role of trade unionism. Attempts at implementing the recommendations of the (1946–49) Gowers Committee on Health, Welfare, and Safety in Non-Industrial Employment dominated events up to the mid-1960s, with the TUC the main lobby for this. Various enabling Acts, the Agriculture Acts of 1952 and 1956, and then the Offices Act 1960, stumbled onto the statute book; the last led directly to the more substantial Offices, Shops and Railway Premises (OSRP) Act 1963. Despite this measure bringing millions of employees some safety protection for the first time, millions more remained outside any statutory protection or inspection regime.
By the early 1960s, the relative failure of voluntary methods to improve accident prevention under the Factories Acts had spawned the union demand (particularly by the Foundry Workers) for legislation on compulsory safety committees and safety delegates/representatives. This became TUC policy in 1964; after a failed attempt at encouraging voluntary reform by employers the Labour government introduced a Bill in 1970 to effect this (though it fell with the government’s election defeat). The TUC’s conversion to compulsion away from voluntarism was an important shift (though voluntary developments were still encouraged in the absence of law).
In the mid-1960s TUC policy was also groping towards advocating a central body to regulate health and safety, with all employment covered. In 1954 the National Joint Advisory Council of the Ministry of Labour (on which the TUC was represented) had set up an Industrial Safety sub-committee; in 1967 this was upgraded into an Industrial Safety Advisory Council, making the TUC voice more prominent. In that latter year the Ministry of Labour suggested new legislation to replace the Factories Act and the OSRP Act. It was a short step to the (1970–72) Robens Committee on Safety and Health at Work. Although the Department of Employment successfully advocated a shift from the traditional approach of legislation based on premises and operations to one based on the employment relationship, the new Health and Safety at Work etc Act of 1974, as an enabling Act, would coexist for a long period with the detailed standards of pre-1974 legislation. (Show less)

“Mastering the Labour Market” explores the ideas and institutional approaches developed in Germany and Britain to meet the challenge of unemployment in the modern industrial economy. From the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, employment exchanges and unemployment insurance became the main instruments deployed by European states in dealing with labour market conditions in a state of structural realignment as a result of foreign competition and technological change. This study of the ideological underpinnings associated with the development of employment exchanges designed to address disequilibrium in the labour market will contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between state, the market and society. It also engages directly with a fundamental feature of the welfare state. The paper explores whether employment exchanges were introduced in the first place as a means of increasing market efficiency by enhancing the decasualisation of labour, rather than as a public project designed to improve the employment chances of job seekers. This issue is central to a historical understanding of the nature of the welfare state in Europe in the early-twentieth century.

Among historians, employment exchanges have not attracted much attention. Studies on social reform and welfare often do not even consider employment exchanges. Therefore, it would be a significant contribution to the study of the welfare state in Europe in general and the relationship between citizens and state in particular. (Show less)

This paper studies the reaction of the British, Canadian and U.S. labor movements to the Beveridge Report in the area of old age security. In particular, it examines how the labor movements fought for old age security as a right – which they won. It also interrogates how these movements tried to win the original Beveridge goal of equal benefits and equal contributions – which they eventually retreated from. The paper will show how the unions and labor political parties used a combination of economic and political power to win old age security as a right. It will also show how those countries with the more politically powerful labor movements held onto the demand of equal benefits for the longest time, although eventually all countries moved to differential benefits.
Specifically, in the case of Great Britain the Labour Party won a huge majority in 1945 and instituted the welfare state which included old age security by right with equal benefits. It was only during the 1950s that the limits of such a program became clear and the Labour Party moved to differential benefits with the Trades Union Congress coming along slowly and reluctantly. As late as the 1970s, the TUC continued to fight for some degree of universal flat benefits.
In Canada there was an old age pension granted only to those in need with many restrictions. The CIO unions, working with the labor endorsed Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, spearheaded a fight for a modest flat pension by right and used strikes and the threat of strikes to win company support of their demand. Only in the 1960s did the unions and their political party secure differential benefits with the creation of the Canada Pension Plan/Quebec Pension Plan.
In the United States the CIO unions, in the 1930s, and under pressure from the Townsend Plan, demanded $60 at 60, a $60 per month pension, paid by right, to all those aged 60. This put the industrial federation, with its vast economic power yet stunted political power, at odds with the Social Security system, established by the New Deal Democrats in 1935 which paid a rather small old age benefit on a differential basis. While the CIO enthusiastically endorsed the Beveridge Plan, it also made its peace with the system and accepted differential benefits. But as the Social Security Old Age and Survivor’s Insurance payments failed to keep up with inflation, and the program seemed on the verge of extinction, in 1949 the CIO unions used their economic power to call out more than a million workers on strike to demand a private pension of $100 per month, less Social Security payments. With the victory of this demand the unions won company support for the very large 1950 Social Security increases in both level of payments and coverage. (Show less)