JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

102 SAOTHAR13statistical forms. Regular features include notes on Congress activities; copies of Congress statementsand submissions; summaries of official reports and legislation; Labour Court, Rights Commissioner,Employment Appeals Tribunal and Equality Officer recommendations and determinations; and wagemovements, consumer price indeces, unemployment figures at national and sectoral levels anddemographic data. All this information covered trade union concerns in both the Republic and NorthernIreland.The value of some journals stretches beyond the union itself. The Postal Worker and Civil Servantare important not only for the history of the Post Office Workers' Union and the Civil Service ClericalAssociation but for public service organisations generally. Major concerns for. these bodies from theearly 1920s to the early 1950s include the cost of living bonus, the Stabilisation of the Cost of LivingBonus Order, 1940, and the fight for the establishment of an independent conciliation and arbitrationsystem. Both journals give extensive details on these issues.General workers are, perhaps, not so well served by journals. The Irish Union of DistributiveWorkers' and Clerks (IUDWC) was the only union consistently to issue a journal. The Irish Transportand General Workers' Union (lTGWU) issued Liberty 'from 1949 on and had, of course, beenassociated with the Irish Worker, Watchword anda number of other titles at an earlier time,! and theWorkers' Union of Ireland issued Report between 1952-54 and later Bulletin from 1957-65. Themonthly issue of the Distributive Worker remains, however, the most consistently valuable source.Annual delegate meetings, branch meetings and, up to 1934, details of the union's national healthinsurance section featured in the journal. 2 The annual reports of the general secretary are supplementedby branch secretaries' annual reports. There is important information relating to the organisation ofparticular categories of workers such as tailors, garment and clothing workers in the 1920s and lawclerks and typists in the early 1940s. Law clerks and typists proved hard to organise as, despite apublicity campaign only 13% out of a potential membership of 700 had been organised by the end of1943. 3The Distributive Worker covers issues such as the minimum wage question, the Shop Acts, closinghours/orders, apprenticeship and legal cases such as the Enniscorthy picketing case. From at least 1934the IUDWC was involved in legal cases concerning the right to picket in trade disputes. 4 'Branch Notes'cover disputes and strikes ranging from a lock out of members in Ballaghadereen, 1925,5 to a disputeover the question of minimum wages in the Belfast Damask and Linen Company, Dublin, which lastedover eight and a half years before ending in 1945. That strike was one that th~journal claimed 'wouldgo down in history as one of the most protracted in the whole history of trades unionism'.6In common with other unions, the lUDWC' s principal activity in the early 1940s was the negotiationof standard wage orders, bonus orders and additional bonus orders under the terms of EmergencyPowers (No. 166) Order and its various amendments, (1942!3V Copies of wage rates and bonus ordersachieved are usually printed in the journal; later, this practice continued with Labour Court WageOrders, National Wage Agreements and copies of other negotiated agreements. s Branch reports werea regular feature with the Dublin ones being particularly comprehensive. Both R.M. Fox and HannaSheehy-Skeffington were regular contributors as the journal carried articles of general interest, shortstories and other literary works.Some information given in union journals should be treated cautiously. Obviously the organisationalinterests of the union will dominate "at times and consideration should be given to inter-unionrelations, particularly for unions operating in a competitive fashion within the same industry or workarea. The Postal Worker was extremely critical of the Association of Irish Post Office Clerks, formerlythe Dublin Civil Service Telegraph Association, in the 1930s and later of another breakaway from thePost Office Workers' Union organising indoor workers, the Post Office Clerical Association, thejournal seldom mentioning the association's name but using the term 'secessionists' instead. Similarly,the Distributive Worker was occasionally critical of the Irish National Union of Vintners, Grocers' andAllied Trades' Assistants and of the Irish Commercial T~avellers' Federation, which for a short period,1936-44, was amalgamated with the lUDWC.9 Sometimes different unions, in their separate journals,