(34.) Note that the first ever established lock-out in Australian industrial history was conducted by the boot and shoe manufacturers of Victoria in response to the attempt by the Victorian Bootmakers Union to preventing employers from using
sweated labour; see Argus, 20 November 1884, p.
Feminist writers joined in 'the clothes wars,' attacking the many levels of exploitation: the
sweated labour of women millinery workers; the 'living in' regimes of women retail shop staff; the genteel fictions that cloaked the industry's general enthrallment of their sex.
Poorer
sweated labour proliferated in the manufacturing trades creating much more competitive markets for both goods and the labour that manufactured them.
Otherwise we shall have accusations of some countries undercutting others through "
sweated labour".
By 1917, the Smethwick Trade Council and other trades unions were calling for an end to such immigrant labour and
sweated labour. Once the war was over the Aliens Restrictions Act followed.
Beatrice brought to the partnership skills already honed as an investigative reporter of the horrors of
sweated labour and working-class poverty via work for Octavia Hill and Charles Booth.
Employers also stepped up the process of contracting out to
sweated labour, and squeezing wages.
The target of a union organizing drive in the mid-1980s, it housed service sector employers who were using
sweated labour to reduce wages and make work even more precarious.
It grieves me that our forefathers fought hard for a five-day 40-hour week, yet today in large areas of industry staff and management are today's
sweated labour.
