The History of Trade Unionism / (Revised edition, extended to 1920)

SLIDING SCALES

The Sliding Scale, an arrangement by which it is agreed in advance that wages shall vary in a definite relation to changes in the market price of the product, appears to have been familiar to the iron trade for a couple of generations. “About fifty years ago Mr. G. B. Thorneycroft, of Wolverhampton, head of a well-known firm of iron-masters, suggested to certain other houses that wages should fluctuate with the price of ‘marked bars’—these words indicating a quality of iron that then enjoyed a high reputation. The suggestion was adopted to this extent, that when a demand was made by the men for an advance in wages, any advance that was given was proportionate to the selling price of ‘marked bars.’ The puddlers received, as a rule, 1s. for each pound of the selling price; but on exceptional occasions, a special temporary advance or ‘premium’ was conceded. The terms of this arrangement do not seem to have been reduced to writing, though they remained in force for many years, and were well known as the Thorneycroft scale.” [739]

At the time of the great strike of Staffordshire puddlers, in 1865, a local understanding of a similar nature appears to have been in existence. The joint committee of iron-masters and puddlers, which was established at Darlington in 1869 as the “North of England Manufactured Iron Board,” soon worked out a formal sliding scale for its own guidance. This scale, as well as that adopted by the Midland Iron Trade Board, has been repeatedly revised, abandoned, and again re-established; but its working has, on the whole, commended itself to the representatives of the ironworkers, and has, so far as the principle is concerned, produced no important dissensions among them. “We believe,” said Mr. Trow, the men’s secretary, to the Labour Commission in 1892, “it would be most satisfactory if this principle were generally adopted.... In all our experience of the past we have had less trouble in the periods in which sliding scales have obtained.” The cause of the exceptional satisfaction of the ironworkers with their Wages Boards and Sliding Scales is obscure, but it may be interesting to the student to note that the members of the Ironworkers Association are largely sub-contractors, themselves employing workmen who are usually outside the Union, and have no direct representation on the Board. For a careful statement of the facts as to these Wage Boards and Sliding Scales in the iron industry, see The Adjustment of Wages(by Sir W. J. Ashley, 1903), pp. 142-151, and specimen rules, reports, and scales, pp. 268-307. At present (1920) separate Sliding Scales of this nature are in force for the Cleveland and the North Lincolnshire Blast-furnacemen; the Scottish Iron and the Consett Millmen; Brown Bayley’s No. 1 Mill; the Scottish Enginemen and Steel Millmen; the Staffordshire Sheet Trade; the Midlands Puddling Mills and Forges; and the South Wales and Monmouthshire Iron and Steel Trade.

Widely different has been the result of the Sliding Scale among the coal miners. Its introduction into this trade dates from 1874, though it was not until 1879 that its adoption became common. Since then it has been abandoned in all districts, and it is energetically repudiated by the Miners’ Federation. The following table includes all the Sliding Scales in the coal industry known to us. Between 1879 and 1886 there were a number of informal Sliding Scales in force for particular collieries, which were mostly superseded by the more general scales, or otherwise came to an end. It is believed that no Sliding Scale is now in force in any coal district.

An exposition of the construction and working of Sliding Scales is contained in Industrial Peace, by L. L. Price. Details of numerous Scales are given in the report made by a Committee to the British Association, entitled Sliding Scales in the Coal Industry, which was prepared by Professor J. E. C. Munro (Manchester, 1885), and in the Particulars of Sliding Scales, Past, Present, and Proposed; printed by the Lancashire Miners’ Federation in 1886 (Openshaw, 1886, 20 pp.). Supplementary information is given in Professor Munro’s papers before the Manchester Statistical Society, entitled, “Sliding Scales in the Iron Industry” (Manchester, 1885), and “Sliding Scales in the Coal and Iron Industries from 1885 to 1889” (Manchester, 1889). The whole question is discussed in The Adjustment of Wages(by Sir William Ashley, 1903), pp. 45-71; and in our own Industrial Democracy, 1897.

The proceedings in the numerous arbitrations in the coal and iron trade in the North of England, as well as several others which are printed, furnish abundant information on the subject of their working. A table of the variations of wages under sliding scales was prepared by Professor J. E. C. Munro for the Royal Commission on Mining Royalties, and published as Appendix V. to the First Report, 1890 (C 6195).