Gender,Skill and the Regulation of Labour Markets: Victoria 1890-1930

Abstract

Peter Macarthy drew our attention to tbe critical role of unskilled labour in the mouvement towards the establishment of the Victorian wages boards. The reversal of the fortunes of male unskilled workers during the 1890s depression, be argues, provoked widespread sympathy both within and outside the labour mouvement and resulted in a broad coalition of political and industrial forces prepared to intervene in the labour market in the interests of the fair; living wage. While I would not wish to dispute the importance of the pressure generated by the unskilled, or suggest that there was no element of altruism in the support offered by craft unions for their cause, subsequent research has highlighted the ways in which skilled workers supported the wages boards for their own reasons and used the boards to pursue their own agendas. This article will therefore explore the ways in which skilled workers attempted to use the wages boards to protect the status of craftsmen by controlling the competition from women and boys. It will also assess the effectiveness of these strategies in the context of the changing market for female labour; arguing that the declining supply of female industrial workers in the early twentieth century was more important than restrictive wages board provisions in containing the competition from female labour.