ABSTRACT
An important feature of the mode of adjustment of the terms of employment to meet altered economic or technical conditions, was the continuity of the collective bargaining. In the very month after a wage advance had been negotiated—November 1920—the cost of living fell seven points, initiating a trend which was to continue for the next fourteen years. The Quarterly J.I.C. meeting was mainly occupied with finding some formula that would save the face of the union executives who would have to recommend their members to accept wage reductions. The T.A. Executive maintained stoutly that the union had a constitutional right to autonomy on wage matters, that it had kept the Federation informed of developments, and that its refusal of wage reductions was ‘one of the greatest fights ever put up in the industry’.
