The outbreak of the War quickly resulted in heavy unemployment in printing. In May 1940, unemployment, though falling slightly from the peak of II per cent in January, was still nearly double the pre-war rate. The adopted scheme was a voluntary one, first put before the J.I.C. by Colonel Fletcher and George Isaacs, in 1940. The J.I.C. approved the idea and later obtained the endorsement of the Minister of Labour and National Service. A great defect of the Emergency Agreement was that it had no procedural provision for settling disputes. During 1941, as more and more men and women of military age were called into the Forces, and others were transferred to Essential Industries and munitions, the supply of labour eventually fell short of the demand, and for the remainder of the War the employers had the novel, and to many unpalatable, experience of coping with a labour shortage, in addition to the shortages of paper and other raw materials.