Economics of collective barganing

THE purpose of this book is to assist students of economics, whether in the university, in workers' classes or in business, to look at the realities of the labour market in the light of current economic theory. It has been built from actual cases drawn from Parlia mentary and official inquiries, wage awards, trade union reports, etc. As it is important that these matters should be discussed in the work-a-day world of business and trade union activity without the undue use of technical terms, which can often be dispensed with when the distinctions implied have become part of one's way of

thinking, the argument has been set out in non-technical language. I hope that students from the trade union movement with whom I have had the pleasure of discussing these matters over many years will feel that I have tried to answer their questions and that the

work has profited by the interchange of ideas and experience. The book is concerned with collective bargaining as such, and though it discusses some of the problems of union policy to which this gives rise in conditions of full employment, it does not deal with Government wage policy, which involves monetary and political questions of quite a different order requiring separate and extended treatment.