ABSTRACT
Trade Unions have struggled throughout their history to establish standard rates of wages. In the case of the skilled trades, such rates go back a long way beyond recorded Trade Union activity. There were well-established rates of wages for the various types of craftsmen in London and other towns throughout the eighteenth century; and agricultural labourers also tended to be paid at regular rates. Piece-rates could be standardised as much as weekly, daily, or hourly time-rates. But in practice the piece-working trades—especially textiles—seem to have been subject to much greater fluctuations in wage-rates, corresponding to greater fluctuation in the demand for their products, than the skilled urban crafts. The Trade Unions, almost confined until the later nineteenth century to skilled workers, sought to establish local standard rates for each craft and to widen as much as they could the area of bargaining, so as to establish uniform rates in neighbouring towns.
