Catalogue description Records of Trade Boards and Wages Councils, and the responsible departments

The Trade Boards Act 1909 established wage fixing machinery in certain 'sweated' industries for the purpose of determining statutory minimum wages. The Board of Trade was responsible for administration and enforcement of the Act until it was transferred to the Ministry of Labour in 1917. The Trade Boards Branch of the Board of Trade became the Trade Boards Division of the ministry's Headquarters Department. During the First World War, Trade Board activities were suspended. Following the Trade Boards Act 1918, the ministry's powers were extended to cover badly organised trades, and the division was transferred to the Wages and Arbitration Department. It became involved in determining general questions relating to minimum wages policy, with the work of inspection and enforcement being carried out by a Trade Boards Inspectorate. Although nominally attached to the industrial relations departments, the Office of Trade Boards developed as a self-contained unit during the inter-war period. The ministry provided secretarial and clerical staff for Trade Boards as well as accommodation at which their meetings could be held.

Under the Wages Councils Act 1945, Trade Boards were replaced by Wages Councils. Their position was consolidated in 1959 by the Terms and Conditions of Employment Act and the Wages Councils Act. Under these statutes, wage regulating machinery could be set up in any industry where the workers desired it; decisions of Wages Councils were, if acceptable to the minister, promulgated as statutory instruments. The minister could also abolish a Wages Council if voluntary bargaining machinery replaced it satisfactorily.

Two industries developed independent schemes which were subsequently absorbed into the system:

• The Road Haulage Wages Act 1938 set up a Central Wages Board for the industry which was converted into a Wages Council in 1948; similarly
• The Catering Wages Act 1943 created a Catering Wages Commission responsible for advising on conditions in the industry and recommending the establishment of Wages Boards. Four such Boards were set up which, under the 1959 legislation, were converted into Wages Councils and the Commission abolished.

The agriculture industry remained independent of the system, retaining its own statutory wage fixing procedure under the Agricultural Wages Board, directly responsible to the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food and its predecessors.