Medieval guild and apprenticeship systems (that continued well into the 19th century) used to ensure that tradesmen were well paid, that the number of tradesmen matched the demand for them in the economy, and that their services were of a high quality. What was good about this system was that it was self regulating to provide these outcomes.
A master builder got cheap labour (you could pay apprentices less), the apprentices got a free education (from the master builder), the education was high quality (the apprenticeship period was 7 years, on the job training), the supply of labour was controlled, (master builders could keep their wages at a decent level by deciding how many apprentices to take on), but also responsive to the economy (in a period of high demand for work, a master builder would take on more apprentices, so you’d have more master builders coming into the workforce over time, and in a slow period a master builder would have less apprentices, which would decrease the oversupply of workers over time). Master builders were incentivized to choose competent apprentices (since they’d be stuck using them as their labout for seven years before they qualified), and the public knew they’d be getting someone with real experience and competence (because you could only become a master builder through a long period of real on the job training doing the actual job.
Compare this to our current joke of a system where people can do many trades with no qualifications, or the qualifications are sitting in a classroom or messing about being taught skils by some “instructor” who has never even done the job in the real world, to get your “GNVQ level 2” or some other meaningless qualifications. As well as this the current system doesn’t care about the number of people qualifying, so you often get far too many or too few people doing qualifications for specific jobs. Even our so called “modern apprenticeships” don’t really function like a proper traditional apprenticeship system.
You might say “what an outdated system, we need a free market”, but what’s interesting is that while guilds were abolished for working class jobs (builders etc), they were kept in place for middle class jobs - that’s what the systems for lawyers, accountants etc still are today. (you can only get professionally qualified as a solicitor if you are taken on by a firm of solicitors to train for several years, which lets them regulate the number of people qualifying as solicitors and keep their wages high etc). This is what has allowed the middle classes to keep their own pay high, while workers in working class jobs are undercut by immigrants etc who can walk right into those working class trades)
I think this would be a big vote winner from working class traditonal labour voters (current tradesmen would be grandfathered as “masters” from the start of the new guild system)
