大象传媒

This clip suggests that the origins of trade unions lay in the failure of the early Factory Acts to protect children and women, and limit the hours that men worked. Using the testimony of reformers Robert Owen (1827) and Richard Oastler (1833), they describe how appalled they were at the treatment of child-labour in factories. They observe that there is more protection for the Black African slave than children at this time. As a result many began working together, forming unions to agitate for changes in the law and greater respect for the worker.