Trade unions

Com­pos­i­tors and press­men in let­ter­press print­ing were rep­re­sent­ed from the mid­dle of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry by the Scot­tish Typo­graph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. Before that many towns had local Typo­graph­i­cal Soci­eties which pro­vid­ed ben­e­fits to sick and out of work mem­bers, some­times as part of wider fed­er­a­tions. In 1975 it became part of the Soci­ety of Graph­i­cal and Allied Trades (SOGAT 75, lat­er SOGAT 82) which lat­er amal­ga­mat­ed with the Nation­al Graph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion (NGA) to become the Graph­i­cal Paper and Media Union. In 2004 the GPMU became part of Ami­cus, and since 2007, work­ers in the print­ing and allied trades have been rep­re­sent­ed by Unite the Union’s Graph­i­cal Media and Paper Sec­tor.

The print­ing side of the lith­o­graph­ic trade was organ­ised from the 1880s by the Amal­ga­mat­ed Soci­ety of Lith­o­graph­ic Print­ers. The orig­i­na­tion side was rep­re­sent­ed by the Amal­ga­mat­ed Soci­ety of Lith­o­graph­ic Artists, Design­ers, Engravers and Process Work­ers (SLADE) from the 1880s. Both of these unions became part of the Nation­al Graph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion in the 1960s, as did the Nation­al Soci­ety of Elec­trotypers and Stereo­typers (NSES), which organ­ised print­ers’ foundry work­ers such as elec­trotypers and stereo­typers. A num­ber of oth­er unions rep­re­sent­ed work­ers such as machine rulers, work­ers in the paper­mak­ing indus­try, book­binders, type­founders and var­i­ous ancil­liary work­ers such as warehousemen.

You can down­load a list of Scot­tish trades union archives.

Many doc­u­ments, which might have been hand­writ­ten in oth­er trades, were print­ed as a mat­ter of course, for exam­ple pay claims, or memo­ri­als, put to the employ­ers, such as this one addressed ot the mas­ter priners in Edinburgh.

• Memo­r­i­al of the jour­ney­men com­pos­i­tors, 1861 [PDF 4.1Mb]

Over time the rules and agree­ments gov­ern­ing the wages and con­di­tions of the work­ers changed, and the rule books and pay scales were print­ed for the use of members:

• Edin­burgh scale for jour­ney­men, 1878 [PDF 11.9Mb]
• Edin­burgh scale for com­pos­i­tors, 1859 [PDF 5.5Mb]

Edin­burgh Typo­graph­i­cal Society

• Laws & Reg­u­la­tions, 1844 [PDF 13Mb]

Scot­tish Typo­graph­i­cal Association

• Agree­ments, 1925 [PDF 13.8Mb]
• Rules, 1949 [PDF 19.3Mb]

You can read an account of the dis­pute  1893 Glas­gow Evening Cit­i­zen lock-out on the St Bride’s Library blog.