Truck Acts is the name given to legislation that outlaws truck systems, which are also known as "company store" systems, commonly leading to debt bondage. In England and Wales such laws date back to the 15th century.
History The modern successor of the Truck Acts is found in the Employment Rights Act 1996 sections 13–27. This replaced and updated the Wages Act 1986 which had itself repealed the Truck Acts. A case called Bristow v City PetroleumBristow v City Petroleum 1 WLR 529, 532 was the last case to be decided under the old legislation and in it, Lord Ackner in the House of Lords gave a short history of the previous regime.
British legislation
In Great Britain and (after 1801) the United Kingdom, a series of acts of Parliament have been enacted to make truck systems unlawful: The (12 Geo. 1. c. 34) The (1 & 2 Will. 4. c. 37) The Truck Amendment Act 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 46) The (59 & 60 Vict. c. 44) The Truck Act 1940 (3 & 4 Geo. 6. c. 38)
The Truck Acts 1831 to 1896 means the Truck Act 1896 and the Truck Acts 1831 and 1887.The Truck Act 1896, section 12
The Truck Acts 1831 to 1940 means the Truck Act 1940 and the Truck Acts 1831 to 1896.The Truck Act 1940, section 3(1)
The Truck Acts were repealed by section 32(2) of, and part III of schedule 5 to, the Wages Act 1986.
The rise of manufacturing industry saw many company owners cashing in on their workers by paying them in full or in part with tokens, rather than coin of the realm. These tokens were exchangeable for goods at the company store, often at highly inflated prices. The Truck Act 1831 (1 & 2 Will. 4. c. 37) made this practice illegal in many trades, and the law was extended to cover nearly all manual workers in 1887.
Position by 1910 Shop assistants, so far as they are engaged in manual, not merely clerical labour, come under the provisions of the Truck Act 1831 (1 & 2 Will. 4. c. 37) and the Truck Amendment Act 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 46), and in all circumstances they fall within the sections directed against unfair and unreasonable fines in the Truck Act 1896 (59 & 60 Vict. c. 44); but, unlike employees in factories, workshops, laundries and mines, they are left to apply these provisions so far as they can themselves, since neither Home Office inspectors nor officers of the local authority have any specially assigned powers to administer the Truck Acts in shops.
Setting aside the special Hosiery Manufacture (Wages) Act 1874 (37 & 38 Vict. c. 48), aimed at a particular abuse appearing chiefly in the hosiery industry—the practice of making excessive charges on wages for machinery and frame rents—only two acts, the 1887 act and the 1896 act, have been added to the general law against truck since the 1831 act, which repealed all prior Truck Acts and which remained the principal act. The 1887 act amended and extended the act without adding any distinctly new principle; the 1896 act was directed towards providing remedies for matters shown by decisions under the earlier Truck Acts to be outside the scope of the principles and provisions of those acts.
Truck Amendment Act 1887
| status = Repealed | original_text = https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/50-51/46/contents/enacted | collapsed = yes }} Under the (50 & 51 Vict. c. 46) the main objects were:
to make the wages of workmen, i.e. the reward of labour, payable only in current coin of the realm, and to prohibit whole or part payment of wages in food or drink or clothes or any other articles; to forbid agreements, express or implied, between employer and workmen as to the manner or place in which, or articles on which, a workman shall expend his wages, or for the deduction from wages of the price of articles (other than materials to be used in the labour of the workmen) supplied by the employer. The act added a further prohibition by making it illegal for an employer to charge interest on any advance of wages, "whenever by agreement, custom, or otherwise a workman is entitled to receive in anticipation of the regular period of the payment of his wages an advance as part or on account thereof." Further, it strengthened the section of the principal act which provided that no employer shall have any action against his workman for goods supplied at any shop belonging to the employer, or in which the employer is interested, by securing any workman suing an employer for wages against any counter-claim in respect of goods supplied to the workman by any person under any order or direction of the employer, and by expressly prohibiting an employer from dismissing any worker on account of any particular time, place or manner of expending his wages.
Certain exemptions to the prohibition of payment otherwise than in coin were provided for in the Truck Act 1831, if an agreement were made in writing and signed by the worker, viz. rent, victuals dressed and consumed under the employer's roof, medicine, fuel, provender for beasts of burden used in the trade, materials and tools for use by miners, advances for friendly societies or savings banks; in the case of fuel, provender and tools there was also a proviso that the charge should not exceed the real and true value. The act amended these provisions by requiring a correct annual audit in the case of deductions for medicine or tools, by permitting part payment of servants in husbandry in food, drink (not intoxicants) or other allowances, and by prohibiting any deductions for sharpening or repairing workmen's tools except by agreement not forming part of the condition of hiring.
Two important administrative amendments were made by the act: a section similar to that in the Factory and Mines Acts was added, empowering the employer to exempt himself from penalty for contravention of the acts on proof that any other person was the actual offender and of his own due diligence in enforcing the execution of the acts; the duty of enforcing the acts in factories, workshops, and mines was imposed upon the inspectors of the Factory and Mines Departments, respectively, of the Home Office, and to their task they were empowered to bring all the authorities and powers which they possessed in virtue of the acts under which they are appointed; these inspectors thus prosecute defaulting employers and recover penalties under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts, but they do not undertake civil proceedings for improper deductions or payments, proceedings for which would lie with workmen under the Employers and Workmen Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 90).
The persons to whom the benefits of the 1831 act applied were added to by the 1887 act, which repealed the complicated list of trades acts contained in the principal act and substituted the simpler definition of the Employers and Workmen Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 90). Thus the acts of 1831 to 1887, and also the 1896 act, apply to all workers (men, women and children) engaged in manual labour, except domestic servants; they apply not only in mines, factories and workshops, but, to quote the published Home Office Memorandum on the acts, "in all places where workpeople are engaged in manual labour under a contract with an employer, whether or no the employer be an owner or agent or a parent, or be himself a workman; and therefore a workman who employs ... and pays others under him must also observe the Truck Acts." The law thus in certain circumstances covers outworkers for a contractor or sub-contractor. A decision of the High Court at Dublin in 1900 (Squire v. Sweeney) strengthened the inspectors in investigation of offences committed amongst outworkers by supporting the contention that inquiry and exercise of all the powers of an. inspector could legally take place in parts of an employer's premises other than those in which the work is given out. It defined for Ireland, in a narrower sense than had hitherto been understood and acted upon by the Factory Department, the classes of outworkers protected, by deciding that only such as were under a contract personally to execute the work were covered.
In 1905 the law in England was similarly declared in the decided case of Squire v. The Midland Lace Co. The judges (Lord Alverstone, C. J.; and Kennedy and Ridley, J.J.) stated that they came to the conclusion with "reluctance", and said: "We venture to express the hope that some amendment of the law may be made so as to extend the protection of the Truck Act to a class of workpeople indistinguishable from those already within its provisions." The workers in question were lace-clippers taking out work to do in their homes, and in the words of the High Court decision "though they do sometimes employ assistants are evidently, as a class, wage-earning manual labourers and not contractors in the ordinary and popular sense."
The principle relied on in the decision was that in the case of Ingram v. Barnes. At the time of the passing of the 1887 act it seems to have been generally believed that the obligation under the principal act to pay the "entire amount of wages earned" in coin rendered illegal any deductions from wages in respect of fines.
Important decisions in 1888 and 1889 showed this belief to have been ill-founded. The essential point lies in the definition of the word "wages" as the "recompense, reward or remuneration of labour", which implies not necessarily any gross sum in question between employer and workmen where there is a contract to perform a certain piece of work, but that part of it, the real net wage, which the workman was to get as his recompense for the labour performed. As soon as it became clear that excessive deductions from wages as well as payments by workers for materials used in the work were not illegal, and that deductions or payments by way of compensation to employers or by way of discipline might legally (with the single exception of fines for lateness for women and children, regulated by the Employers and Workmen Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 90)) even exceed the degree of loss, hindrance or damage to the employer, it also came clearly into view that further legislation was desirable to extend the principles at the root of the Truck Acts. It was desirable, that is to say, to hinder more fully the unfair dealing that may be encouraged by half-defined customs in work-places, on the part of the employer in making a contract, while at the same time leaving the principle of freedom of contract as far as possible untouched.
The Truck Act 1896 regulates the conditions under which deductions can be made by or payments made to the employer, out of the "sum contracted to be paid to the worker", i.e. out of any gross sum whatever agreed upon between employer and workman. It makes such deductions or payments illegal unless they are in pursuance of a contract; and it provides that deductions (or payments) for (a) fines, (b) bad work and damaged goods, (c) materials, machines, and any other thing provided by the employer in relation to the work shall be reasonable, and that particulars of the same in writing shall be given to the workman. In none of the cases mentioned is the employer to make any profit; neither by fines, for they may only be imposed in respect of acts or omissions which cause, or are likely to cause, loss or damage; nor by sale of materials, for the price may not exceed the cost to the employer; nor by deductions or payments for damage, for these may not exceed the actual or estimated loss to the employer.