ABSTRACT
Employer/employee relations in the workshops of the eighteenth century tend to be obscure in nature, but the one form of self-help and of defence against an exploiting employer, when the need arose, was the trade combination or trade union. Before the nineteenth century, trade unions existed among the skilled trades in a variety of forms, often barely distinguishable from friendly societies. Combinations were usually confined to the skilled trades in which the higher wages paid permitted the collection of funds to be used for strike pay or sickness benefit. Many employers appear to have tolerated combinations as convenient organizations with which to negotiate wages, prices, and other matters, as in the London printing, coopering and brushmaking trades. To assess the significance of the Combination Acts as part of the history of the trade union movement presents an interesting challenge.
