ABSTRACT
Separated by the vast chasms of class, social status, working conditions, pay and employment conditions, and linked only by being part of the same sprawling industry, it might be thought spurious to try and argue that architects and operatives had very much in common in the post-war era. However, there are a number of areas where there were similarities between the two groups, if not in their working lives. Both architects and operatives, compared to others in their occupational groupings, were poorly remunerated. By the early 1960s, even though architects' average salaries had increased considerably since the findings of the Pilkington Inquiry, they had not increased relative to the other professions. 1 In parallel with this, average manual earnings in construction stayed below average manual earnings in manufacturing industries, and in 1968 were less than 50 per cent of the average manual earnings in a comparable industry, shipbuilding. 2
