British Labour Management & Industrial Welfare
1846-1939
Routledge Library Editions: Work & Society Series

Originally published in 1988, this book examines company provision of welfare in the century preceding the Second World War, a period of enormous change in the structure and organisation of British industry and management. The creation of large-scale, corporate companies increased the need for settled, experienced company workforces and for adequate levels of industrial welfare. The paternalistic, frequently ad hoc methods associated with smaller firms were replaced with systematic schemes. This process is illustrated and discussed in 5 detailed case studies with supportive evidence from many other industries. Moreover, the political aspects of industrial welfare are not ignored. The role of employers in influencing the final form of social legislation for the benefit of their own company schemes is crucial to understanding the development of industrial welfare.

1.Industrial Relations, The Company and Welfare 2. The Railway, Monopoly and Labour Management 3. Labour in the Metropolitan Gas Industry 4. The Development of Company-Based Labour Policies in the Iron and Steel Industry 5. Systematic Management and Welfare in the Chemicals Industry 6. The Labour Question in the Breweries 7. The Place of industrial Welfare in British Industry 8. The Labour Co-partnership Association and the Industrial Welfare Society 9. Industry and Social Reform. Epilogue.

Robert Fitzgerald is Professor of Business History and International Management at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has researched and written on the historical, international and comparative analysis of business; labour history and management; marketing; multinational enterprise; and the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and British economies. He is the author of The Rise of the Global Company: Multinationals and the Making of the Modern World, and he is currently researching the historical role of labour management in the formation of business organization, and Japanese small business.