CRAFT UNIONS AND THE FORCE OF TRADITION: THE CASE OF APPRENTICESHIP*
| Date | 01 March 1979 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1979.tb00625.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1979 |
| Author | D. J. Lee |
CRAFT UNIONS AND THE FORCE
OF
TRADITION:
THE CASE OF APPRENTICESHIP*
D.
J.
LEE?
MUCH
conventional wisdom on the subject of craft unionism portrays
it
as some kind of
pernicious survival from the past. The commonest version
of
this thesis is based
on
the
notion
of
craft
traditions,
that is, sensitive occupational vested interests surviving from
the heyday
of
the skilled labour aristocrat. Usually their continuing influence is much
criticised and regarded as disruptive of the economy, the labour movement or both. The
task of this paper is
to
re-examine the notion of ‘craft traditions’ carefully. It does
so
on
the basis
of
a study
of
the behaviour and policies
of
craft unions toward apprenticeship
since the Second World War.
At
the time
of
writing$ the issue is a topical one. Proposals
for the ‘ending
of
traditional time-served apprenticeship as we know
it”
in
the engineer-
ing industry have sparked off a debate both within and beyond the unions immediately
affected and revived dormant criticisms of their apprenticeship policies. A re-
examination
of
the industrial relations aspects
of
the apprenticeship question
is
thus
timely and
in
the author’s view, necessary.
We may usefully begin by looking a little more closely at the underlying form of the
theory of craft ‘traditions’. One
of
its main exponents was Allan Flanders, whose
contribution relates to a largely unrecognised lacuna
in
the writings of commentators
on
British industrial relations up
to
that point. On the one hand, restrictive practices among
craft workers had been seen as evidence
of
the ability
of
their unions
to
control
the
labour supply;
on
the other hand,
it
was known that pre-entry control via apprentice-
ship, as the original basis of that power, was no longer fully viable anywhere. From what,
therefore, did craft control and with it, craft identity, derive its current strength?
According
to
Flanders the persistence
of
restrictive practices reflects what
he
called a
‘cultural struggle’,
one
involving
‘.
.
.
the
force
of
traditions that are as old as British
trade unionism’. Elsewhere he argues that
’.
. .
although there are no pure craft unions
left of any size, the force of craft traditions remains undiminished
in
unions that also
organise unskilled and semi-skilled workers’.2 The merit of this formulation is that it
forces us
to
recognise that processes and strategies
of
particular types
of
unionism can
survive the organisations that brought them into being. Craft consciousness
is
found
in
groupings as diverse as the Engineering Section
of
the Amalgamated Union of
Engineering Workers at one extreme and the printing and boilermakers unions at the
other. What these unions have
in
common
is
the attempt
to
preserve a formal member-
ship status for apprentice-trained craftsmen within a wider recruitment base. In what
follows, therefore, references
to
‘craft unions’ are made for convenience
only
and
should be taken as following Flanders’ practice
of
emphasising similarities in process
and strategy. It is not restricted
to
the remaining (mostly small) craft societiesper
se.
There are, however, a number
of
serious difficulties in Flanders’ explanation
of
the
survival
of
craft attitudes and identity. Some
of
these problems are purely conceptual.
The notion
of
‘tradition’ properly understood implies a moral contrast between cultural
influences and rational means-end calculation which,
in
the context of industrial rela-
tions, is reminiscent of Roethlisberger and Dickson’s ‘logic
of
sentiments’.
It
almost
seems to rule out from the start the possibility (of which Flanders himself was clearly
*
The author wishes to thank Henry Friedman, Bryn Jones, Roger Penn and the referee
of
the
Brifish
Journalof
Industrial
Relarions
for
their advice and comments on
an
earlier version
of
this
paper. They are
not
responsible
for
any
errors
which remain.
t
Senior Lecturer
in
Sociology, University
of
Essex.
$August
1978.
34
CRAFT UNIONS AND THE FORCE
OF
TRADITION
35
aware) that empirical work might reveal a rational basis to worker behaviour. Calling
behaviour ‘traditional’ also begs the question
of
why
some cultural practices persist and
not others. Worse, it obscures the problem
of
whether a ‘survival’ serves the same
function as it did in the past.
For
reasons like this, social scientists in widely diverging
areas
of
research have warned
of
the dangers
of
using ‘tradition’ as an explanatory
device in too
ad hoc
a fa~hion.~
But there is an important substantive issue at stake. Critics
of
the craft unions accuse
them
of
being a
vested interest
and hence a conservative influence on British industry in
general and on industrial training in particular. Now, industrial relations writings reveal
a struggle
to
give the notion
of
a ‘vested interest’ some scientific explanatory power. In
particular, understanding how and why restriction
of
entry is practised has been at the
heart
of
an ancient and largely unsuccessful attempt
to
distinguish the ‘proper’ functions
of
trade unions (i.e. improving the economic rewards and conditions
of
labour) from the
‘improper’ interference
of
unions with managerial
right^.^
Close inspection shows that the tradition thesis belongs to, but does not transcend,
this debate. All trade unionism places a limitation on managerial freedom in some way
but craft unions have been engaged in an explicit battle over managerial prerogatives in
relation to training and manpower. Why is this type
of
unionism different in kind from
the rest? Apparently it is the craft tradition as a source
of
sectional
or
‘particularistic’
interests and devices which is being singled out for comment. The following quotation
illustrates how Flanders especially falls back on unproven assumptions about ‘vested
interests’ as the prime motivator. He writes: ‘the union interest [in apprenticeship] was
mainly directed to regulating entry into the trade, not to upholding certain standards
of
training’.5 Hence, he goes on, the traditions
of
craft unionism need to be distinguished
from
occupational
traditions
of
craftsmanship which promote pride in the trade and
concern for the calibre
of
work. The union resistance to managerial prerogatives is thus
portrayed as being motivated by a cynical
manipulation
of cultural for sectional ends,
precisely the perspective which is to be found in the Webbs’ classic,
Industrial Democ-
racy.
What evidence
is
there for such a view? Flanders’ main source consisted
of
work from
the late
1950s,
notably that
of
K.
Liepman and Lady Williams. These had left many with
the impression that the Webbs’ judgment, unaltered by the passage
of
time, could be
used to explain what appeared to be union intransigence over the reform
of
training in
the postwar period; but the amount
of
hard evidence produced by these writers
is
actually rather meagre.‘ Another important source
of
belief in union manipulativeness
is the evidence, much
of
it anecdotal, about ‘restrictive practices’ presented by em-
ployers and the Ministry of Labour to various official enquiries and in particular to the
Donovan Commission. As we shall see, however, neither
of
these parties can be held to
be impartial in any discussion
of
the absence
of
manpower policy in Britain’ since the
war and we do well to remember this when reading their assessments
of
the situation.
Against the material
so
far described
I
propose
to
set a neglected body
of
evidence
which indicates that the factors shaping union apprentice policies in the postwar period
have been complex and cannot be reduced simply to a matter
of
the sectional exploita-
tion
of
cultural survivals. In order to make the discussion
of
these manageable
I
shall
confine myself to three principal industry groups, engineering and shipbuilding, con-
struction, and printing.
No
doubt, parallels can be found elsewhere but the choice
of
these particular three examples is not fortuitous. They are the groupings on which critics
originally based their conclusions and from which the majority
of
commentators on
apprenticeship have sought to derive backing for their opinions.
I
hope to show that the
residual use by unions
of
restrictions on apprenticeship has not been solely,
or
even
primarily, the result
of
positive efforts to ‘socially construct’ islands
of
job prosperity
and privilege along traditional lines.
To
focus only on this aspect is to neglect the
defensive as against the offensive aspects
of
unionism and the fact that a number
of
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