civilized labour, noun phrase

obs. except in historical contexts, offensive
1. Labour perceived to conform to Western (or White) standards; White labour. Cf. uncivilized labour.
1924 Prime Minister’s Circular No.5 in E. Hellmann Handbk on Race Rel. (1949) 152Civilized labour..[is] the labour rendered by persons whose standard of living conforms to the standard generally recognized as tolerable from the usual European standpoint.
1924 L.D. Gilson in Hansard 31 July 118The Minister in defining ‘civilized labour’ in this country, said he regarded as civilized labour those white and coloured workers who lived on the higher standards...That is going to create a very bad impression on the natives of this country...I do hope that..if he is going to include the coloured worker, he will say civilized labour is the labour of any man who lives on a higher plane and not of the coloured man only.
1943 ‘J. Burger’ Black Man’s Burden 29When South Africans speak about the ‘Labour Movement’ they refer to European, or as it is sometimes delightfully called, ‘civilized’ labour.
c1949 Survey of Race Rel. 1948–9 (S.A.I.R.R.) 32In all Government Departments, except Native Affairs and the Railways and Harbours, ‘civilized’ labour is to be substituted for that which might be regarded as ‘uncivilized’.
2. In the phrase civilized labour policy, the official labour policy introduced in 1924 which protected the White (and Coloured) workers by excluding Black workers from many jobs. See also job reservation.
1936 Cambridge Hist. of Brit. Empire VIII. 805Government authorities responded to public insistence that government enterprises such as the railways should adopt a ‘civilised labour’ policy which implies the payment of higher wages to Europeans than their coloured and native competitors would have been glad to accept for the work.
1943 ‘J. Burger’ Black Man’s Burden 38The first Nationalist Government..inaugurated the ‘civilized labour’ policy of subsidising European unskilled labour.
c1949 Survey of Race Rel. 1948–9 32In May 1949, a circular was issued by the Prime Minister’s Department, re-affirming the ‘civilized labour’ policy of 1924.
1969 A. Hepple S. Afr.: Workers under Apartheid 45The so-called ‘civilised labour’ policy..was first applied..when the Nationalist-Labour government of the day instructed state departments and provincial authorities to employ ‘civilised’ labour insted of ‘uncivilised’ labour, i.e. to employ white and not Africans in unskilled jobs.
1986 P. Maylam Hist. of Afr. People 159Mission-trained craftsmen, small-scale producers and property-holders..were becoming increasingly proletarianised as a result of the Pact government’s civilised labour policy and its assault on the position of the African middle class.
1989 Reader’s Digest Illust. Hist. of S. Afr. 333The state tried to protect white workers by introducing what it termed a ‘civilized labour’ policy — in other words, a system that guaranteed work for whites at the expense of blacks.
Labour perceived to conform to Western (or White) standards; White labour.
In the phrase civilized labour policy,the official labour policy introduced in 1924 which protected the White (and Coloured) workers by excluding Black workers from many jobs.
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obsolete or obsolescent
derogatory or offensive
civic, nounn.clack, nounn.
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