A fair day's wage for a fair day's work? : sweated labour and the origins of minimum wage legislation in Britain

Sheila Blackburn

The nature of sweating and the origins of low pay legislation are of fundamental social, economic and moral importance. Although difficult to define, sweating, according to a select committee established to investigate the issue, was characterised by long hours, poor working conditions and above all by low pay. By the beginning of the twentieth century the government estimated that up to a third of the British workforce could be classed as sweated labour, and for the first time in a century began to think about introducing legislation to address the problem.Whilst historians have written much on unemployment, poverty relief and other such related social and industrial issues, relatively little work has been done on the causes, extent and character of sweated labour. That work which has been done has tended to focus on the tailoring trades in London and Leeds, and fails to give a broad overview of the phenomenon and how it developed and changed over time.In contrast, this volume adopts a broad national and long-run approach, providing a more holistic understanding of the subject. Rejecting the argument that sweating was merely a London or gender related problem, it paints a picture of a widespread and constantly shifting pattern of sweated labour across the country, that was to eventually persuade the government to introduce legislation in the form of the 1909 Trades Board Act. It was this act, intended to combat sweated labour, which was to form the cornerstone of low pay legislation, and the barrier to the introduction of a minimum wage, for the next 90 years.

「Nielsen BookData」より

[目次]

  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • Part 1 Sweating Revealed, 1843- 90: The 'discovery' of sweated labour, 1843-50
  • The 'rediscovery' of sweating, 1876-90
  • Part 2 The Search for an Effective Solution: Anti-sweating campaigns, 1890-1905
  • The turning point of 1906 and the legal minimum wage
  • Part 3 The Minimum Wage in Practice: The test case of the 1910 Cradley Heath dispute
  • R.H. Tawney and the minimum wage
  • The persistent problem of low pay
  • Conclusion
  • Appendix
  • Index.

「Nielsen BookData」より

この本の情報

書名 A fair day's wage for a fair day's work? : sweated labour and the origins of minimum wage legislation in Britain
著作者等 Sheila Blackburn
Blackburn Sheila
シリーズ名 Studies in labour history
出版元 Ashgate
刊行年月 c2007
ページ数 xii, 232 p.
大きさ 24 cm
ISBN 9780754632641
NCID BA84846478
※クリックでCiNii Booksを表示
言語 英語
出版国 イギリス
この本を: 
このエントリーをはてなブックマークに追加

このページを印刷

外部サイトで検索

この本と繋がる本を検索

ウィキペディアから連想