Trade unions started with the industrialisation of the late 18th and the 19th centuries, which drew thousands of workers together in towns and cities to live and work in poverty. The success of British industry in the hundred years from 1780 was built on the exploitation of hundreds of thousands of workers who worked 14 to 18 hours a day for miserable wages in unsafe factories, and lived in bare and comfortless homes. - See more at: http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/about-us/history/the-history-of-the-tg/#sthash.EBGZD2NB.dpuf