Development of Trade Unions: Decline and Growth of Trade Unions 1870-1914
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36399/GroundingsUG.16.460Keywords:
Trade Unions, Economy, Industrial Relationships, Economic HistoryAbstract
This essay analyses the developments of trade unions and how the reciprocal relationship between unions, the economy, the worker and the employer, developed and evoled the unions into what they became by the eve of WW1. It will contrast union movements in different periods and examine the similarities and differecnes between them and the different causes and consequences of these factors. It writing about a period of great change within the labour movement, when the working class were beggining to find true value in labour organising and so gives insight into the development of later trade union and labour movements of the 20th Century.
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