Trade union membership was also expanded greatly during the conflict, up one-third from 6,053,000 in 1938 to 8,174,000 in 1943. Growth was concentrated mainly in the Transport and General Workers' Union, the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the General Municipal Workers' Union, who all recruited greatly amongst semi-skilled workers in the munitions factories. Further advances were also enabled by the operation of the EWO in firms such as the Ford Motor Company and Morris Motors Ltd, who had previously resisted organisation through the routine sacking of activists. This was now prohibited and allowed the unionisation of hitherto unorganised sectors of industry, especially as the unions were also able to utilise the pressing demand for labour to force their nominees into the shops. Employers were also put under pressure to establish Joint Works Production Committees (JPCs). Championed by the Engineering and Allied Trades Shop Stewards Council, JPCs were intended to encourage mutual co-operation to increase production and gradually adopted across industry, they enabled the remarkable development of consultative machinery at factory level and hugely strengthened the shop stewards' movement.
Work in the collieries was of supreme importance in keeping the wheels of manufacturing industry turning. Mining, however, had an aging and depleted labour force and its long legacy of troubled industrial relations meant that it was responsible for between one-third and one-half of working days lost in 1943-4. Mining remained a dirty, dangerous and poorly paid industry that seemed unwilling to modernise and from which over 80,000 men had left to join the army by 1942. Unwilling to take direct government control over the industry, an EWO was applied to mining. Bevin compelled young men from mining backgrounds to remain in the pits and, from December 1943 a ballot of those coming of age for national service selected 1 in 10 for service in the mines - the famed 'Bevin Boys' scheme that propelled many of the middle class into the pits and made apparent what miners had suffered for so long. Although the EWO set minimum wages, this was insufficient to cancel out the setbacks of the interwar period. The Miners Federation insisted more pay was the only solution to the recruitment crisis in the industry and at rank and-file level impatience at the lack of progress resulted in many unofficial stoppages. The increases in basic rates proposed by the 'Greene Board' (1) and the 'Porter Award' (2) established a new national minimum and paved the way for the amalgamation of the district unions of the Federation into one National Union, but failed to increase miners' wages ahead of the rising cost of living. Furthermore the 'Porter Award' disrupted cherished differentials provoking a nationwide stoppage in 1944 until the government stepped in to impose the highest minimum wage in the country on the employers.
As the country became increasingly reliant on imports of arms and food from the US, improving efficiency in Britain's West Coast ports became a key objective in the battle to maintain supplies. The slow turn around of ships and poor labour relations were both fostered by the traditional system of casual working, where men would report at 'pens' along the dockside each morning
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The Home Front in the Factories, Docks and Mines by Jon Murden
