SOUTH
MET.- WELFARE WORK
South
Met. had policies towards its workforce which have been described as
'welfareist' or 'paternalistic' - what were these policies and why were they
instituted? Was management trying to make the lives of their workers better? Or
cynically putting in measures to stop strikes?
Work
in the retort houses of the gas works was hard, hot and unpleasant. Trade Union
leader, Will Thorne described vividly his brief period of work at Old Kent
Road... 'the work was hard and hot ... -it was gruelling, agonising ... working
for twelve hours a day in heat and steam'.[1] Outsiders
were even more shocked. We have Gustave Dore's prints of the Lambeth Gas Works
- where wretches in rags slump exhausted away from the smoking retorts. Flora
Tristan described the Horseferry Road works of the Chartered Company in the
1830s: 'the work demanded of them is more than human. Strength can endure ...
the heat was suffocating ....the air is horribly tainted ...at every instant
you, are assailed by poisonous fumes ... the entire premises are very dirty ...
this is even worse than the slave trade’. [2] In
1863 Zerah Colburn wrote about the extreme heat and the strain put by this on
the workforce: 'the work is tiring ... in the hottest of the works the men
frequently strip to the waist and work every article reeking of sweat'.[3] Other writers highlighted particular problems
- the system of alternating twelve hour shifts, the wage levels, Sunday working
and seasonal employment, using extra men in the winter.
The
work consisted of putting coal into a retort, waiting for it to char and then
remove the hot coke. Thus would have to be 'quenched' with water, removed and
the process started again. The gas made went through a series of processes to
remove impurities, held in a gas storage holder before being piped to the
customer. Most of these processes were noxious and dirty and resulted in
sometimes dangerous by-products which themselves were for sale, possibly on
site. Doubtless gas engineers put safety and pollution control low on their
lists of priorities.
By
the 1880s working conditions had probably improved - at the very least some
smells and dirt had been controlled through public pressure. The open sheds used
as rest places for the men were enclosed and sometimes provided with washing
facilities together with newspapers and similar items. Workers' complaints in
the 1880s did not focus on the physical unpleasantness of the work but on the
length of shifts and the regulation of tasks.
In
the popular press - both in the 1880s and subsequently - 'stokers' is a synonym
for 'gas workers'. Stokers – and other retort house workers - had to be
exceptionally strong. In 1889 as police marched replacement labour into the
South Met. works; they were assessed by the public and the press as potential
gas workers in terms of brute strength: 'the natural thing to do was to study
the physique of the new arrivals - the vast majority were capable labourers and
many of them were obviously powerful men'. [4]
The
physical conditions in which gas workers worked should not be under-estimated
in their physical unpleasantness - but those who did this work may have had
considerable pride in their abilities to endure it. Such hard work in great
heat inevitably led to a lot of drinking and inevitably a proportion of what
was drunk was beer ... 'the old men [men working at South Met. before the 1889
strike] drank beer and were drunk at work but they were not drunkards [5]' said
a witness to the Royal Commission of Labour, and this must be kept in mind when
considering the temperance advocacy of some gas company managements. Colburn
says that the gas workers drank 'skilly' - water with oatmeal in it - and
George Livesey tried to promote the consumption of this at the Old Kent Road
Works. Nevertheless such heavy drinking goes along with heavy work and beer consumption
adds to the pride of men able to do both the work and take their drink. The
first resolution of the Gas Workers Union embodied the principle of no
substitution of labour - men should not do the jobs of others - the only
exception was to be when a labourer was 'drunk for the first time'. [6]
'Stokers'
has become a synonym for 'gas worker' but stokers were themselves only one of
several sorts of labourer working in the retort house and that retort house
workers did not even constitute the majority of gas industry workers. In 1911
retort house workers were only about a third of the total workforce.[7] Without
retort house workers gas could not be made, but the majority of gas workers had
different working conditions according to what they did. Skilled craft workers enjoyed the conditions
general to those who practised their particular trade in other industries -
blacksmiths, carpenters, stable hands, and so on. 'Outside' men often worked unsupervised
in the freedom of the streets - lamplighters, fitters working on domestic
premises, collectors - as well as labourers who working in gangs supervised by
foremen. In the 1890s South Met. had workshops where domestic appliances were
made. Some men watched valves and meters in order to act in case of emergency.
Other labourers were employed outside the retort houses doing equally hard and
heavy work - but not in conditions of great heat. There were also sailors and
lightermen, as well as office staff and shopworkers, including cookery
demonstrators. And an army of semi-specialist workers processing by-products.
South
Met. was a large company in the 1880s and its workforce was large and
specialized but they had grown very quickly from the situation described in Wandsworth works, 'one day or
two stoking, changing over to helping in the yard and finishing up with a
bit of piece work.’[8]
A photograph of the 1870s[9] shows
the administrative staff as five people who had between them to carry out the
entire clerical - purchase and sales procedures and supervise a continuous
process industry. Many of the workforce would have had experience of many
different tasks in the works.
However
by the 1880s tasks were regularised and work had become less varied. Works like
the Old Kent Road recruited workers from the same families, sons followed
fathers. The Company house magazine gives numerous instances of families with generations
of work. A boy might start in the works in his early teens and graduate to
retort house work when he was strong enough; in old age he would be given
lighter work. Some boys would pass to skilled work or to an unskilled
specialisation, or even to clerical work and maybe progress to management. Gas
managements of the 1880s were staffed with men who often been the 'boys' of the
1840s and 50s. Progress through ability was an available path.
More
retort house workers were needed in the winter tan in the summer. Some full
time retort house workers would be recruited from the pool of 'winter men’.
However, the pool of ‘winter men’ was one of the main problems of the industry.
Gas managements would often save maintenance work for the summer and retort
house workers, not needed to make gas, would be employed on general laboring. Those
laid off for the summer would be given first refusal to come back next autumn. Workers
would often have regular summer jobs to go to, like, door instance, brick
making in the Sittingbourne area. Sittingbourne was an area from which South Met.
hoped to recruit 'blacklegs' in the autumn of 1889.
‘Winter
men' were employed casually on a regular basis. South Met. included its winter
men in some welfare arrangements on a special basis and treated them as employees,
albeit irregular ones.[10]
Seasonality does not appear to have been a factor in industrial action in either
1872 or in 1889. If it was in the Company's perceived interest to promote
welfare then it was in the Company's interest to include the winter men in it -
by 'attaching' them to the Company they could be made them more likely to act
as strike breakers than to join the strikers.
It
is noticeable that throughout the 1889 strike period that wages are not an
issue discussed by the Union. Wages throughout London were maintained at level
of parity by employers - companies informing each other of rises and adjusting
rates accordingly. Wage levels among retort house workers were generally higher
than for similar labouring work - for 1906 an average wage for all occupations was
between 30/- and 35/- and in London sometimes over 45/-. Compared to the
respectable workers living in Lambeth in the same period[11]
retort house workers in London were doing well. Gas Workers suffered from long
arduous hours doing hot and heavy work in a polluted environment - but for
reasonably good money - many workers did worse for less.
In
relation to gas workers conditions before 1889 the eight hour day is usually to
the forefront. A system of twelve hour shifts was generally in use before then and
it was the rallying cry of the industrial action of 1889. Work in the retort
houses was divided into two twelve hour shifts, one on and one off, for seven
days a week. Once a month the shifts were changed over involving one set of men
in a grueling eighteen hour change over period. Gas was necessarily made in a
continuous process and with inadequate storage the rate of make must be roughly
equivalent to demand. From the 1870s the problem of long shifts and lack of
breaks - in particular the lack of a Sunday holiday - increasingly concerned
both managements and workers.
In
May 1871 South Met. Directors minuted an attempt to reduce labour in the retort
houses on Sundays[12] and in
1905 an old gas worker described how the ending of the eighteen hour change
over period in South Met. was brought about in the 1870s by creating more
storage space for gas all those larger and larger gas holders where more gas
could be stored to cover Sundays.[13] He also
said this was done first by Robert Morton a friend of Livesey, and then manager
at the Phoenix Company.
This
easing of working, hours, however, only concerned Sunday working and although
eight hour shifts were worked in some works for many years before 1889, twelve
hours were still general in London. Eight hour shifts do not automatically mean
less work since it is a re-arrangement of shifts and manpower so that less men
do more work for a shorter time. The workforce is divided into three shifts
instead of two and men perform more highly differentiated tasks. On the twelve
hour system there were often long breaks with no work to do which made the pace
easier and often more acceptable to the older men.
George
Livesey claimed that the workforce had been offered the eight hour system
before 1889 by management - although this instance is not minuted.[14] It
had been rejected because the workforce wanted 'the big shilling' described by
Charles Carpenter was the money earned on a twelve hour shift. [15]
the
professional journals give no solid reasons for advantages to management of a
change to the eight hour system yet in 1889 most managements seem to have given
way to union demands with very little argument - indeed some, like Gas Light
and Coke Co., said they welcomed the change: 'there has been no fight with this
company on the question of the eight hour system - as a matter of fact the
system was brought in some years ago and declined. As soon as it was suggested
we did so.”[16]
In 1889 and again in 1890 South Met. balloted its workers over which system
should be run in individual works. The 1889 ballot produced a response for the
eight hour system in all works but in 1890 Rotherhithe workers opted for twelve
hours - and remained on this system for some years. [17]
What
had changed was the size and scale of gas works. Works like Old Kent Road in
the years before 1880 were small and domestic affairs. Wives and children
brought dinners in to men working on shift, children could play in parts of the
works; workers in the breaks on the long shifts could swim in the - as yet
fairly - unpolluted canal and put out lines to catch fish. They might have
allotments on site and grow vegetables and flowers. After 1880 as the company
expanded this level of domesticity was lost - with increased public transport
workers did not need to live locally and the loss of the sense of community is
part of the new situation which co-partnership tried to meet. In 1889 union men
complained of a harder work load - was this in effect an accumulation of small
changes which meant that felt that they had reached the point at which the work
load was oppressive. [18]
In
the period from 1870 to 1880, there were many amalgamations. In London small
companies became big ones with many works, divided by years of custom and
practice, not united under one management. As the numbers of customers rose and
output grew plus the numbers of workers grew - and the domestic atmosphere of
small works went. Small works were being phased out and replaced in importance
by large ones - Beckton .... East Greenwich. George Livesey certainly thought
so - 'We seem to be at the parting of the Days, if they have not parted already
- the days of small industries and the old relationships of master and man are
gone past recall and the Joint Stock Company on a large scale with capital and
labour holding diverse views, to put it mildly, is now a reality”.[19] This
problem could be solved, said Livesey, by co-partnership.
SO
–PUT IN WELFARE ARRANGEMENTS
South
Met.'s efforts in this direction have had considerable attention but it is
known that other gas companies instituted welfare arrangements for their
employees. Gas Light and Coke Co. had had sick benefit schemes since the 1820s.[20]
In
South Met for instance, a superannuation scheme had been set up before 1870 -
together with a sick benefit scheme and some sort of holiday provision with
pay. It is likely that they were instigated by Thomas Livesey although it was
also said that a scheme was set up in 1842 - two years after Thomas Livesey had
come to South Met. - both he and members
of the Board believied that men could be improved by being encouraged to manage
provision for their own benefit and futures... South Met’s records of its
earliest sick benefit scheme are scanty, but in 1856 the Director's minuted
that a sum of £20 was to be given to the sick benefit fund. [21]
The
South Met. superannuation scheme of 1855 was set up on the initiative of Thomas
Livesey whose 'exertions in the matter' Gas and Water Times 'rejoiced with'.[22] Rule
Number One of this scheme said that it was to 'provide a minimum pension in the
event of incapacity in old age, not a competency to retire on'[23] and
indeed Gas and Water Times reported that the directors hoped that their
'donations would be the foundation of a superstructure.' [24]That
is the Company was giving a start to the scheme which they hoped the men would
continue and manage for themselves, it was not to make them dependent.
In
1860 a Widows and Orphans Scheme was set up which provided money to educate
orphans of dead employees and to provide a pension for widows.[25] It
must be stressed however that other companies had similar schemes which were
organised with the same view to independence among the workforce. For instance
in 1878 the Phoenix Company gave the Bankside Works Sick Fund £15 to help it
cope with payments during an epidemic of flu[26]
although in normal times such funds should be self-supporting and not relying
on donations.
In
1860 Journal of Gas Lighting published an article on 'Sick Funds for Workmen'.[27] They
argued that the men should be encouraged to run their own funds 'to render
themselves independent of eleemosynary in their seasonal afflictions and
countless troubles that flesh is heir to'. South Met. had a record of
consulting its men before setting such schemes up. Later it was recalled that
George Livesey was at the meeting, held on the 1st December 1855, when the
workmen unanimously agreed with the scheme[28] and
once the shareholders' consent had been agreed at a Company Meeting the scheme
proceeded. Officers did not however have such a scheme - the meeting held for
them had turned the scheme down and it was many years before they agreed to
participate. Such workers meetings were called by South Met. management on
several occasions and are echoed in the 'Interview' called by George Livesey to
explain the 1889 profit sharing scheme.
Where
South Met. was most innovative, in all probability, was in the field of paid
holidays for its workers. Authors of works concerning working conditions at a
later period than the 1870s assume that paid holidays for working people were
unknown until the 1930s. Although there is no originating minute for the
holiday scheme in 1872 the Directors minuted that regular workmen should get 38
two weeks pay with a week’s holiday when it was taken.[29] In
1881 following amalgamation with Surrey Consumers and Phoenix Companies, the
Directors of the new Joint Board minuted an attempt to rationalise holiday
provision throughout the three companies: 'both companies had had particular
holidays which were given with double pay. at Christmas .... and Easter. South
Met.... gives in addition one week's holiday during the summer with double pay
for workmen who have been 12 months in the regular service of the Company ...
Vauxhall gives.. a day's holiday excursion, clothes and gratuities during the
year'. [30]
Once
South Met. had amalgamated with Phoenix and Surrey Consumers there was a move
to rationalise welfare provision throughout the three companies to make them
all the same. What is apparent is that Phoenix and Surrey Consumers had
provided gifts in kind to workers whereas South Met. had given only holidays.
The minute continues to abolish all gratuities and gifts and extends the South
Met. practice of holidays with pay to all workmen with over a year's service.
Abolished with the clothes and joints of meat at Christmas were all excursions
and beanoes. This brings out an important strain in the South Met. ethic - temperance.
South Met’s welfare provision was
austere and designed to make workers help themselves. Holidays with pay had the
rider that the holiday must be taken at the seaside or in the country - and
this was deliberately designed to keep the worker out of the Old Kent Road pubs
and with his family. Gifts were charitable and therefore demoralising - beanoes
by their nature involve drink.
South
Met. was not the only gas company that sought to 'improve' its workers lives.
In the late 1850s Phoenix laid on lectures for the men - but they only attended
in ones and twos, even when the lectures weren't religious. But they did use
the dining room. the washing facilities and the 'lobbies' equipped with papers
and games materials. [31]
It
was practical help which gained a response rather than 'improvement'. Journal
of Gas Lighting quoted increasing numbers of instances of this type of
provision in the 1880s. In the South Met. Livesey's management style from the
1870s was aimed beyond practical applications to improve working conditions to
methods of manipulation of the men to make them help themselves.
George
Livesey always attempted to build incentives into whatever provision was set by
him and by 1889 a whole range of such measures had been introduced. Incentive payments for good
timekeeping, and forms of competition between gangs of workmen to produce high
quantities of gas, are examples. Even Will Thorne, writing in his biography,
remarks with pride how his gang at the Old Kent Road was always able to secure
the bonus payment for high yield. [32]
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