"This book looks at how the workplace was transformed through a greater awareness of the roles that germs played in English working lives from c.1880 to 1945. Cutting across a diverse array of occupational settings - such as the domestic kitchen, the milking shed, the factory, and the Post...

The introduction explores the main theoretical positions taken in this book. Contrary to twentieth-century neoliberal or nineteenth-century wage fund theories, it starts from the assumption that trade unions are a necessary and integral part of the functioning of labour markets in societies...