Women, Other “Fresh” Workers, and the New Manufacturing Workforce ofInterwar Britain

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9967553
AutoresPeter Scott (0000-0003-1230-9040)
Año2000
Volumen45
Número3
Páginas449-474
Fecha de publicación2000-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Review of Social History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-8590 • E-ISSN: 1469-512X
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020859000000249
OpenAlexW1950564688
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas8

Structural, organizational, and technological changes in British industry during the interwar years led to a decline in skilled and physically demanding work, while there was a dramatic expansion in unskilled and semiskilled employment. Previous authors have noted that the new un/semiskilled jobs were generally filled by “fresh” workers recruited from outside the core manufacturing workforce, though there is considerable disagreement regarding the composition of this new workforce. This paper examines labour recruitment patterns and strategies using national data and case studies of eight rapidly expanding industrial centres. The new industrial workforce is shown to have been recruited from a “reserve army” of workers with the common features of relative cheapness, flexibility, and weak unionization. These included women, juveniles, local workers in poorly paid nonindustrial sectors, such as agriculture, and (where these other categories were in short supply) relatively young long-distance internal migrants from declining industrial areas

Agriculture · Business · Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Flexibility (engineering · Geography · Labour economics · Management · Work (physics · Workforce · Engineering · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Political and Economic history of UK and US