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Control by Coercion: Employers' Associations and the Establishment of Industrial Order in the Building Industry of England and Wales, 1860–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

J. A. McKenna  and
Richard G. Rodger
J. A. McKenna
Affiliation:
Personnel manager for Plessey UK Ltd.
Richard G. Rodger
Affiliation:
Lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Leicester.
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Abstract

The history of management-labor relations has in recent years become a central concern for business historians. In this article, Dr, Rodger and Mr. McKenna consider management-labor relations in the British building industry in the years preceding the First World War. They demonstrate that a variety of factors—not the least of which being the industry's notorious volatility—constrained management's ability to discipline the work force, and conclude that whatever success it attained proved transitory, accompanied as it was by the advent of government-financed municipal housing.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , Summer 1985 , pp. 203 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1985

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59 NFBTK, minutes Aug. 1900. The Midland Centre Federation minutes, 1 Aug. 1900, were reported. “The work of expanding the Federation is greatly retarded by the altogether inadequate income from subscriptions which for all purposes amounted to no more than three farthing a week per member.”

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