ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the changing role of trade unions in organizing labour intermediation in several European countries around 1900 (Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the Scandinavian countries). From the end of the nineteenth century trade union intermediation was incorporated in government-led labour exchanges, be it locally or nationally. In this process intermediation was transformed from an instrument of wage control by trade unions into an instrument of control of the unemployed by public exchanges. Originally, trade unions had claimed a monopoly on the organization of intermediation to prevent oversupply in the labour market and downward pressure on wages. However, a trade union monopoly on labour exchange was never realized anywhere. Trade unions therefore had to employ another method to prevent a decline in wages in bad times: unemployment insurance. In the end, the moral hazard associated with this type of insurance forced unions to cooperate with employers and authorities to control the unemployed. Those out of work were now required to register at public labour exchanges to confirm their willingness to work. In this way the labour supply was in effect split into ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’ workers.
