The Living Wage – Policy And Practice

A recent development in addressing the longstanding problem of low pay in the United Kingdom has been the emergence of a social campaign for a ‘living wage’. Using a case study approach this article explores an employer's decision to pay the living wage that, in turn, provided both challenges and opportunities for the unions in their dealings with contractors.     

The Levellers – Britain's First Libertarians?

The common understanding of the Levellers is that they were embryo socialists. Nick Elliott argues that they were seventeenth century libertarians.     

2014 – a year of widening monetary divergence

The Fed's December decision marks a change in active monetary policies. It is a natural consequence of the divergence in global growth that was one of the key developments of 2013. Over the course of the year, US and UK activity strengthened, remarkably so in the case of the UK where at the beginning of the year the talk was of a triple‐dip recession. Chinese activity held up, if below the stellar growth rates of the pre‐crisis years. Japan is beginning to see some dividend from Abenomics, but rather less than expected; while the Eurozone economy is slowing again after showing some brief strength in Q2, and may fall back into recession. Diverging growth was clearly signalled by diverging broad money growth earlier in the year…     

The trend of strikes in coal mining 1949–1979

Explanations for the pattern of strike activity in British coal mining have focused upon the industry's changing economic fortunes or developments in its collective bargaining structure. The author examines these explanations and suggests four additional factors that account for the trend of coal mining strikes.     

‘A cracking job for a woman’– a profile of women trade union officers

This article focuses on the women who constitute less than 10% of the total number of full-time trade union officers–it examines the distribution of women FTOs across the trade union movement, their experiences of working in a male-dominated occupation and the ways in which they adapt to the pressures and demands of their situation.