TRADE BOARD, a term applied in Great Britain to one of a system of industrial wages boards established to fix legal mini mum rates of payment for workers in certain industries under the Trade Boards Acts of 1909 and 1918.
The principal Trade Boards Act of 1909 was based on the minimum wage provisions contained in the Factory and Shops Act of Victoria, Australia, passed in 1896. The Trade Boards Act was the result of long and vigorous agitation for legal protection on behalf of the "sweated" women workers, particularly in the chain making industry centred in Cradley Heath, and in the clothing trades of London and the great towns. Boards were first estab lished in four trades set out in the act, namely, ready-made and wholesale bespoke tailoring; paper-box making; machine-made lace finishing and chain making. Before 1914 five new trades were added, making nine in all.
Each of these boards was composed of an equal number of representatives of employers and workers in the trade plus from one to three neutral persons, called "appointed" members desig nated to sit on each board in order that a deadlock might be avoided.
The bodies so constructed had two powers under the Act of 1909: 1. A mandatory power to fix minimum rates of wages for time workers in the specified trades; 2. A discretionary power to fix general minimum rates of wages for piece workers in a trade. Rates of both kinds were subject to confirmation by the Board of Trade before becoming effective, and even then had to undergo the test of a six months' limited operation before they became obligatory upon all employers.
The action of these early boards was very cautious and in general their effect upon wages of women workers was to raise the general level of rates to that of the firms which were already paying the highest or very nearly the highest in the trade. Rates fixed for men, on the other hand, fell, on the average, below the rate for all men in a trade though they were higher than rates for the average unskilled man.
Between 1912 and the signing of the Armistice in 1918 the principle of state wage regulation became widely recognised through extended legislation in Australia, the United States and Great Britain. The tendency of the early months of the war in England was to favour suspension of Trade Board activities, but that attitude was soon abandoned in the interests of efficiency.
Then, in addition to the Coal Mines (minimum wage) Act passed in 1912, came the Munitions of War Acts of 1915, 1916 and 1917, the Corn Production Act of 1917 and finally the Wages (Tem porary Regulation) Act of 1918, each of which provided for state control of wages in some form and thus strengthened the Trade Board idea.
In line with the general movement towards state control and self-government in industry the second Whitley Report in 1918 recommended to Parliament the extension of the Trade Boards system to unorganised and spasmodically organised trades as a complement to the establishment of voluntary "Whitley" Councils in the better organised industries. It was hoped that eventually organisation of both employers and workers in Trade Board trades would become strong enough to warrant their removal from Gov ernment surveillance to the category of Whitley Council indus tries, governed by a body of representatives of organised em ployers and workers co-operating voluntarily together for the good of the whole industry.
The background for the new Trade Boards Act which became effective on October 1, 1918, therefore, was threefold—first, more general acceptance of the principle of state regulation of wages; second, articulation of the democratic ideal of self-govern ment in industry set in motion by the war; third, the foresight of those who realised that the aftermath of war would be a sharp drop in wages especially for unprotected workers, unless some machinery were provided to meet the exigency.
The Act of 1918 was thus born in an entirely new set of eco nomic circumstances and was the result of a quite different con cept from that of 1909. It consequently made several important changes in the Act of 1909. First, the situation conditioning estab lishment of a Trade Board was altered, emphasis being thrown upon inadequate organisation of workers or employers in a trade instead of relatively low wages ; second, the rate fixing powers of boards were considerably enlarged ; third, the responsibility of the Minister of Labour, who since 1917 had acted in place of the President of the Board of Trade, was increased and the onus of establishing boards was placed upon him rather than upon Parlia ment.