ABSTRACT
Trade Union organisation, being largely on a craft basis, follows the occupation rather than the industry; and the larger total is therefore the more relevant to the Trade Union problem as a whole. Most of the engineering processes are found in other industries — notably those related to the maintenance of machinery. The wood-working Unions, with one exception, have bigger interests in other industries — building, carriage and cart construction, furniture, shipbuilding, maintenance work in numbers of grades. Government establishments are generally under Whitley machinery, comprising Works Councils, Departmental Industrial Councils, and, grouping the latter, Trade Joint Councils. But the likely coincidence of full-time working in some sections of the industry with short-time working and unemployment in others, may raise the issue sharply in the near future. In the industry direct State action by legislation and Ministerial Order has been conspicuously rare.
