Outlines the work undertaken to repair and upgrade ′The Milliners′,a 16th century structure and Grade II listed building. Discusses theinitial thorough investigation of the house…
Abstract
Outlines the work undertaken to repair and upgrade ′The Milliners′, a 16th century structure and Grade II listed building. Discusses the initial thorough investigation of the house, and the methods by which the owner′s brief to retain the character of the house while allowing for a high standard of modern services, was carried out. Details the problems of inserting services into the structure without cutting into the floor and the installation of central heating radiators into the outside wall of one of the bedrooms. Explores the work of the building contractor, electrical services contractor and mechanical services contractor, supervised by a clerk of works. Suggests that the work would have been more efficiently carried out by a single consultant.
Details
Keywords
Chris F. Wright, Alex J. Wood, Jonathan Trevor, Colm McLaughlin, Wei Huang, Brian Harney, Torsten Geelan, Barry Colfer, Cheng Chang and William Brown
The purpose of this paper is to review “institutional experimentation” for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review “institutional experimentation” for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the corresponding rise of “non-standard” forms of paid work.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on the existing research and knowledge base of the authors as well as a thorough review of the extant literature relating to: non-standard employment contracts; sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and entities that subvert the employment relationship.
Findings
Post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model of collective bargaining and the standard employment contract as a “web of rules”. As work relations have become more market mediated, new institutional arrangements have developed to govern these relations and regulate the terms of engagement. The paper argues that these are indicative of an emergent “patchwork of rules” which are instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.
Research limitations/implications
While the review of the institutional experimentation is potentially instructive for developing solutions to gaps in labour regulation, a drawback of this approach is that there are limits to the realisation of policy transfer. Some of the initiatives discussed in the paper may be more effective than others for protecting workers on non-standard contracts, but further research is necessary to test their effectiveness including in different contexts.
Social implications
The findings indicate that a task ahead for the representatives of government, labour and business is to determine how to adapt the emergent patchwork of rules to protect workers from the new vulnerabilities created by, for example, employer extraction and exploitation of their individual bio data, social media data and, not far off, their personal genome sequence.
Originality/value
The paper addresses calls to examine the “institutional intersections” that have informed the changing ways that work is conducted and regulated. These intersections transcend international, national, sectoral and local units of analysis, as well as supply chains, fissured organisational dynamics, intermediaries and online platforms. The analysis also encompasses the broad range of stakeholders including businesses, labour and community groups, nongovernmental organisations and online communities that have influenced changing institutional approaches to employment protection.
Details
Keywords
What is now known as the Canning Industry commenced on the 30th January, 1810, when Montalivet, the French Minister of the Interior, wrote to Francois Appert and informed him that…
Abstract
What is now known as the Canning Industry commenced on the 30th January, 1810, when Montalivet, the French Minister of the Interior, wrote to Francois Appert and informed him that his—Appert's—new process for preserving foods was assured of success and thereby granting to the process the official recognition of the French Government. Official recognition also carried with it a money grant of twelve thousand francs—about £500 in those days—Appert won this prize on the principle of “Delhi taken and India saved for one rupee eight annas”—and died in the year 1841 a comparatively poor man and the founder of one of the world's greatest industries. As a result of the warlike operations in which it had been engaged, multitudes of sick and wounded were thrown on the hands of the French Government, and scurvy was terribly prevalent in the fleets. Hence the French Government gave a public notice that it would award a prize to anyone who should discover a cheap and satisfactory method of preserving foodstuffs, without either drying or pickling, so that they could be kept for a long period and still retain the natural flavour and other characteristics of the fresh product. Appert had worked at and perfected his process during the preceding ten or fifteen years and had thoroughly assured himself of its practicability. He was therefore well prepared to demonstrate the details before the Board of Arts and Manufactures of which Board Gay Lussac had been a member since the year 1805. The report of this body to the Minister of the Interior was entirely favourable, as was also that of General Caffarelli, the Maritime Prefect of Brest. Caffarelli had found that soups and vegetables prepared by Appert's process had retained their goodness after three months' bottling, and he had been able to supply what seemed to the diners to be fresh vegetables in mid‐winter. It need hardly be said that Appert's process for preserving foods is the one in use now. Appert, however, knew nothing of the principles on which his process depended, nor did anyone else at that time. He supposed putrefaction to be due to the action of the air alone. In this view he was supported by the great authority of Gay Lussac who, it will be remembered, imagined atmospheric oxygen to be the cause. Appert at the request of the Minister of the Interior wrote a short book on the subject—a practical treatise explaining the methods of preserving animal and vegetable substances. This book was almost at once translated into several languages. It would seem that one of the chief advantages that Appert hoped the French people would gain by his invention was the saving of sugar. Up to that time the only means of preserving fruit other than by drying was to immerse the fruit in strong syrup made with cane sugar, and sugar was almost impossible to obtain in France at that time owing to war conditions. He also says that the French Government wished to draw “the utmost advantage from the productions of our soil in order to develop our agriculture and manufactures, and to diminish the consumption of foreign commodities” ! This is exactly what we in this country are trying to do now in the building up of a trade in canned food, a hundred and twenty years later. The English translator of Appert's work complacently observes:—
After 15 years of successful operation, the British Low Pay Commission’s management of the National Minimum Wage was threatened in 2015 by the government’s introduction the…
Abstract
Purpose
After 15 years of successful operation, the British Low Pay Commission’s management of the National Minimum Wage was threatened in 2015 by the government’s introduction the National Living Wage. The purpose of this paper is to consider the underlying principles of previous minimum wage fixing, and the additional thinking of the Living Wage Foundation and the review of the issue by the Resolution Foundation.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on the 2016 reports of the Commission to argue that the two statutory wages are unavoidably interlinked and are tied to incompatible criteria.
Findings
The paper concludes that the predicted eventual impact of the National Living Wage on the labour market will be unsustainable.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is relevant to minimum wage research.
Practical implications
The paper is relevant to minimum wage policy.
Social implications
The paper is relevant to low pay policy.
Originality/value
The paper provides original analysis of minimum wage policy.
Details
Keywords
Abstract
Details
Keywords
The Public Analyst for the County of Lancaster in his report for 1946 to the County Council refers at some length to matters—analytical and administrative—relating to the milk…
Abstract
The Public Analyst for the County of Lancaster in his report for 1946 to the County Council refers at some length to matters—analytical and administrative—relating to the milk supply. Up to the year 1940 the work of taking samples for purposes of analysis under the Food and Drugs Act was done by the police, but in that year it was transferred to the County Sanitary Authority. Four assistant inspectors now “deal with the growing volume of work and to restore it to its pre‐war level.” The difficulties in obtaining adequate supplies of the necessary materials during the war were acute—and still exist though happily in a less acute form—and the shortage of help—both skilled and un‐skilled—are too well known to need more than passing reference. These led, in many cases, to products of the ersatz or “make‐do” variety being put on the market. The public health authorities were in much the same position with regard to help. Thus there was a serious drop in the number of samples submitted. In normal conditions the total number of all samples for the county is about five thousand per year. During the 1914 to 1918 period it fell to about 4,800. But in the altogether abnormal conditions that prevailed during the last war the number of samples dropped steadily from 5,157 in 1938 to 1,731 in 1945. In 1938, 3,304 formal samples were submitted and 1,853 informal samples. But the proportion of informal to formal samples increased and approximate equality was obtained in 1945—870 formal to 861 informal—and in the year 1946, 1,648 formal to 2,046 informal. The war years were marked by an increase in the percentage of adulteration though this increase was irregular. It was 3·6 per cent. in 1939. It rose to a maximum of 9·3 in 1941. It now stands— 1946—at 7·6. The figures for the 1914 to 1918 period tell the same tale. We may suppose that informal sampling followed by warning, if such need arose, exercised a useful check on the activities of those who sought to profit by the unusual conditions. The figures just quoted refer to samples of all kinds including milk, and milk is no exception to the rule that the fewer the samples submitted for analysis, or in other words the less strict the supervision of the milk supply, the greater the amount of adulteration. It is only within recent years that the importance to the nation of a plentiful supply of clean and unadulterated milk has been adequately recognized by public health authorities. It is within the writer's personal experience and no doubt of many of his contemporaries that the very modest standards—so called—of 3 per cent. fat and 8·5 solids‐not‐fat were not often exceeded, sometimes not attained, while the chances were even that some preservative would be found in any given sample. Cowsheds, buildings, and livestock were often in a state that would not favourably impress a present‐day inspector. Milk in fact was not “taken seriously.” The quality of the milk supply was a subject for perennial popular jests. Milk was a pleasant addition to a cup of tea; as an ingredient of an occasional milk pudding; mixed with water it was a beverage at the nursery tables of the well‐to‐do. But the children in the poorer quarters of the cities probably never had a fair drink of milk from one year's end to another. As milk was not then regarded, as it is now, a prime essential of a child's well being; such children were, at least as far as their milk ration was concerned, half starved. Now the importance of milk is fully recognized by all health authorities. Out of a total of 4,122 Food and Drug samples 2,669 were milk. 428 milk samples are called private samples. These were taken from consignments delivered to schools, county institutions, British Restaurants and so forth. 339 were taken at schools. The adulterated samples were only 4 per cent. as against 10·2 per cent. for the whole country. “The results cannot be regarded as unsatisfactory.”
Progress in Europe between 1973 and 1978 is reviewed mainly in the context of the LIBER Seminar on International Interlibrary Lending held in Florence in 1978. The Danish…
Abstract
Progress in Europe between 1973 and 1978 is reviewed mainly in the context of the LIBER Seminar on International Interlibrary Lending held in Florence in 1978. The Danish interlending system is considered separately. Attention is given to a theoretical on‐line system in Belgium and actual on‐line methods in the USA and recent articles from the USA, especially on the National Periodicals Center, are presented. Articles on developments in Scotland, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand are reviewed. Finally payment for loans and the effects of copyright legislation are considered.
A SPLENDID conference, I thought. True, there were those who complained, those who thought some of the papers were elementary and those who thought that we had come a long way to…
Abstract
A SPLENDID conference, I thought. True, there were those who complained, those who thought some of the papers were elementary and those who thought that we had come a long way to learn very little. I don't agree at all. Some of the papers did, I admit, deal with basic considerations but it does nothing but good to re‐examine the framework of our services from time to time. In any case other papers were erudite, and for the first time I have seen an audience of librarians and authority members stunned, almost, into silence.
IF SONS DID NOT EXTOL, many a worthy father would sink into oblivion and forever go unsung. As filial biographers, however, sons customarily meet with intimidating scorn and…
Abstract
IF SONS DID NOT EXTOL, many a worthy father would sink into oblivion and forever go unsung. As filial biographers, however, sons customarily meet with intimidating scorn and derision. There is a generally accepted notion that consanguineous biography is fraught more with fealty and filial frailty than with disinterested depiction. The best way to disprove this false assumption is to muster meritorious biographies written by scions and compare them with representative biographies of the ‘blame and blemish’ variety. Sympathetic assessment always stands up stronger than ostensible objectivity, for writers of the ‘warts and all’ kind of biography lose track of virtues and nearly always become engrossed in the imperfections of their victims.
Presents a short study of the evolution of public libraries in Liverpool, especially asa major contribution to the civic culture of the Victorian city. Provides a brief survey of…
Abstract
Presents a short study of the evolution of public libraries in Liverpool, especially as a major contribution to the civic culture of the Victorian city. Provides a brief survey of the availability of reading materials before William Ewart and the idea of the public library emerged after 1850. Outlines Liverpool’s pioneering progress in this field, beginning in 1852, and culminating in its “Brown Library” (1860), and its “Picton Library” (1879). Also provides a history of Liverpool’s Branch Libraries, fostered by the generosity of Andrew Carnegie. Concludes with references to W.E. Gladstone as a promoter of the nation‐wide movement for public libraries.