Tables showing the rules and expenditure of trade unions in respect of unemployed benefits, and also showing earnings in the insured trades.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tables showing the rules and expenditure of trade unions in respect of unemployed benefits, and also showing earnings in the insured trades. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    iv during the ten years 1900-1909 excludes the payments made by unions dissolved during the period. Such payments, so far as it is possible to estimate them, were inconsider- able, and would not amount to more than £5,000 during the whole period. The eligible membership, on which the amount of expenditure per head in any year has been calcu- lated, has been arrived at by deducting, wherever possible, from the membership at the end of the previous year members not paying to the benefits, members superannuated, honorary members, foreign members and apprentices. Members joining in any year are not, as a rule, entitled to receive benefit until they have paid 12 months’ contributions. EARNINGS IN INSURED TRADES. The details given in the Tables as to the earnings of men and lads and boys in the insured trades are based on information supplied by employers to the Board of Trade, in connection with a general enquiry instituted in 1906 into the earnings and hours of labour in all trades. The enquiry was not made under an Act of Parliament, and some of the employers did not see their way to furnish returns, but as will be seen from the Tables the number of workpeople included in the returns received was very large, and the average earnings deduced from the details furnished may be regarded as fairly representative of the whole. The earnings stated by the employers were the actual amounts paid to their individual workpeople in an ordinary week of 1906, whether such workpeople worked full time or less or more than full time. In summarising the details, the average earnings of full time workers have been shown separately from ‘those for all workpeople. The returns received included all classes of wage-earners in these branches of industry, whether such workpeople were directly engaged in the actual processes of production, or were employed in ancillary occupations, and the’ average earnings shown in the Tables also embrace such men and lads and boys. For example, the earnings of carters connected with the building trades are included, and so also are the earnings of lads and boys under 18 years of age. These classes, with others, are outside the compulsory clauses of Part IL.» of the National Insurance Bill, but it is not possible, from the information given in the returns, completely to eliminate them from the statistics. The number of women and. girls employed i in the insured trades is small, and their earnings have been excluded. One Table shows the earnings in each industry classified b by amount, irrespective of ~ occupation, and the other gives the earnings in each of the principal occupations. Labour Department, Board of Trade, May, 1911.