Sweated Shop Assistants Mr. C. Leachman pleaded for the setting
up of Trade Boards to fix minimum wages for shop assistants, in his presidential address to the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants last Sunday. The speaker was well aware of the fact that Trade Board minimum rates are too often accepted as the maximum which employers of a certain class will pay. Effective trade unionism would secure better average rates. But shop assistants are notoriously difficult to organize. Small traders open shops and run them with unskilled labour which is easily obtained, and even the large stores can draw upon a floating population for their recruits. One of the difficulties in legislating for shop assistants is that employers of labour are in competition with small traders who do all their own salesmanship. The Trade Board method is not the ideal one, but it would get rid of the worst evils of sweated labour.
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