From 'The Economics of Everyday Life' by Gertrude Williams

'When unemployment meant starvation or the workhouse, the trade union secretary realized that it was impolitic to persue a course of action which would face his unemployed members with the alternatives of remaining out of work or accepting jobs at blackleg rates of pay. And a prolonged depression in atre inevitably showed itself in an agreement to lower wages. But the trade union has a very strong hold on the loyalty of its members and there are few who would dream of undercutting, so long as the unemployment insurance benefit provides, at least, sufficient to let one get along. The effect of this was seen during the chronic depression of the inter-war years when although there were at times as many as 23 per cent of the insured population out of work, wage rates fell hardly at all, and when, indeed, if we take into account the fall in the price of foods during this period - real wages rose quite considerably.Here we have an entirely new phenomenon, and one that has, as we shall see shortly, a very important influence on the occupational distribution of the population. As a consequence, on the one hand, of wage rates fixed by collective bargaining, and, on the other, of the provision of a 'cushion' of social security payments to break the fall in the standard of living of those who are not earning a livelihood by their own work, there has come to be a very great element of rigidity in wages. Once rates have risen, it is extraordinarily difficult to bring them down, whatever the level of prosperity in the industry and whatever the rate of unemployment.'