EVIDENCE TO THE NATIONAL BOARD FOR PRICES AND INCOMES BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE RETAIL DRAPERY OUTFITTING AND FOOTWEAR TRADES WAGES COUNCIL
| Published date | 01 November 1967 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1967.tb00518.x |
| Date | 01 November 1967 |
WAGES
COUNCILS
AND
INCOMES
POLICY
351
a
reasonable level. This view was not only shared by numbers
of
other
wages councils, but in addition it generally was held that the duty
of
the
councils to fix minimum remuneration was incompatible with the require-
ment to take into account national policy on prices and incomes.
The survey made by the Board led it to question both whether the wages
council system was serving its original purpose and whether its constitution
was suited to modern conditions. However, consideration of the need for
a
radical reform
of
the minimum wage system could not be established by an
examination of
a
single wages council alone. This required a general
review and the Board argued that the Royal Commission on Trade Unions
and Employers’ Associations should deal with the subject.
Such
a
general review would, however, take time, and the Board,
therefore, suggested that two major problems should receive more urgent
attention. First, the Ministry of Labour should collect and supply to wages
councils far fuller information on the earnings
of
workers they covered,
including both averages and distributions of earnings. Secondly, since, in
the Board’s view, the carrying out
of
a
prices and incomes policy would be
adversely affected as long as wages councils considered themselves debarred
from taking into account in reaching their decisions, the Board recom-
mended that the removal
of
this difficulty should be considered, if necessary
by amending the Wages Councils Act, 1959.
EVIDENCE TO THE NATIONAL BOARD FOR PRICES AND
INCOMES
BY
THE CHAIRMAN OF THE
RETAIL DRAPERY OUTFITTING
AND
FOOTWEAR TRADES
WAGES COUNCIL
I.
INTRODUCTION
1.
The Board has already had occasion to examine the operation of a
Wages Council (Reports
1
and 14: Road Haulage Charges).* The frame-
work of the R.D.O. Council is very much as that
of
the Road Haulage
Council described in paragraphs 35 and 36 of Report 1 by the Board.
2.
The
Board
has been provided with minutes
of
the meetings of the
R.D.O. Council which were concerned with the proposals under reference
and with
a
copy of the current Order governing the statutory minimum
remuneration of the workers within the scope of the Council.
11.
COURSE
OF
THE
NEGOTIATIONS
1.
The Council met on October
1
1 th,
1966,
to consider a motion from
the workers’ side to provide increases
of
30 shillings per week for managers,
manageresses and all other adult workers with proportionate increases at
ages below 21 years.
2.
The motion was supported by a complex framework of argument
*
Cmnd
2695
and
Cmnd
2968
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