ABSTRACT
Fluctuations in the relative earnings of occupations and the incidence of unofficial strikes are two sensitive indicators of performance and stability in work control systems. This chapter explores the analysis widens to a consideration of the scope and direction of work regulation in terms of the strategies of employers and the major production steelworker's union, the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation. It considers the significance of certain characteristic features of the traditional pattern of labour relations in steel with special reference to various influences arising from the social and technical organisation of steelwork. It was during the last fifty years of the nineteenth century that the concerted trade unionisation of iron and steelworkers commenced and the early institutions of its industrial relations established. Official statistics of the average earnings of iron and steel workers are fragmentary and only isolated for particular years before 1930.
