Catalogue description Statistics Branch: Selected Working Papers

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Details of LAB 41
Reference: LAB 41
Title: Statistics Branch: Selected Working Papers
Description:

This series contains returns and reports on a variety of matters affecting industrial relations. They include returns on wages and hours, details of collective agreements, profit sharing and co-partnership schemes, statistics of employers' associations and trade unions, a little material on strikes and lockouts, the wages and hours inquiry 1906-1907, and railway servants. A few of these papers are in printed or published form. This collection was created and used by the Labour departments of the Board of Trade and, after 1916, the Statistics departments of the Ministry of Labour.
Date: 1880-1965
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 259 files and volumes
Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure
Accruals: Series is not accruing.
Administrative / biographical background:

On 2 March 1886, the House of Commons resolved that, 'In the opinion of this House, immediate steps should be taken to ensure in this country the full and accurate collection and publication of Labour Statistics', and in accordance with the resolution, the collection and publication of statistics relating to questions affecting labour began to be undertaken.

In 1906 a Census of Wages and Hours was taken, the object of which was to ascertain the amount actually earned by all classes of workpeople in the United Kingdom in a selected week, industry by industry, occupation by occupation and district by district and to obtain means of estimating their annual earnings.

After the Report on Collective Agreements 1910, the Committee on Industry and Trade urged that 'it would be well worth while for the purpose of educating the public in this little understood aspect of industrial relations to bring up to date and to republish the valuable Report on Collective Agreements'.

Between 1886 and 1912 a return of time rates of wages and hours of labour was made, in order to trace the changes in rates and wages and hours of labour in United Kingdom.

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