Shop Management

by Frederick Winslow Taylor

"In the writer's judgment the system of treating with labor unions would seem to occupy a middle position among the various methods of adjusting the relations between employers and men.

"When employers herd their men together in classes, pay all of each class the same wages, and offer none of them any inducements to work harder or do better than the average, the only remedy for the men lies in combination; and frequently the only possible answer to encroachments on the part of their employers is a strike.

"This state of affairs is far from satisfactory to either employers or men, and the writer believes the system of regulating the wages and conditions of employment of whole classes of men by conference and agreement between the leaders of unions and manufacturers to be vastly inferior, both in its moral effect on the men and on the material interests of both parties, to the plan of stimulating each workman's ambition by paying him according to his individual worth, and without limiting him to the rate of work or pay of the average of his class."

The amount of work which a man should do in a day, what constitutes proper pay for this work, and the maximum number of hours per day which a man should work, together form the most important elements which are discussed between workmen and their employers. The writer has attempted to show that these matters can be much better determined by the expert time student than by either the union or a board of directors, and he firmly believes that in the future scientific time study will establish standards which will be accepted as fair by both sides.

There is no reason why labor unions should not be so constituted as to be a great help both to employers and men. Unfortunately, as they now exist they are in many, if not most, cases a hindrance to the prosperity of both.

The chief reasons for this would seem to be a failure on the part of the workmen to understand the broad principles which affect their best interests as well as those of their employers. It is undoubtedly true, however, that employers as a whole are not much better informed nor more interested in this matter than their workmen.

One of the unfortunate features of labor unions as they now exist is that the members look upon the dues which they pay to the union, and the time that they devote to it, as an investment which should bring them an annual return, and they feel that unless they succeed in getting either an increase in wages or shorter hours every year or so, the money which they pay into the union is wasted. The leaders of the unions realize this and, particularly if they are paid for their services, are apt to spend considerable of their time scaring up grievances whether they exist or not This naturally fosters antagonism instead of friendship between the two sides. There are, of course, marked exceptions to this rule; that of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers being perhaps the most prominent.

The most serious of the delusions and fallacies under which workmen, and particularly those in many of the unions, are suffering is that it is for their interest to limit the amount of work which a man should do in a day.

There is no question that the greater the daily output of the average individual in a trade the greater will be the average wages earned in the trade, and that in the long run turning out a large amount of work each day will give them higher wages, steadier and more work, instead of throwing them out of work. The worst thing that a labor union can do for its members in the long run is to limit the amount of work which they allow each workman to do in a day. If their employers are in a competitive business, sooner or later those competitors whose workmen do not limit the output will take the trade away from them, and they will be thrown out of work. And in the meantime the small day's work which they have accustomed themselves to do demoralizes them, and instead of developing as men do when they use their strength and faculties to the utmost, and as men should do from year to year, they grow lazy, spend much of their time pitying themselves, and are less able to compete with other men. Forbidding their members to do more than a given amount of work in a day has been the greatest mistake made by the English trades unions. The whole of that country is suffering more or less from this error now. Their workmen are for this reason receiving lower wages than they might get, and in many cases the men, under the influence of this idea, have grown so slow that they would find it difficult to do a good day's work even if public opinion encouraged them in it.

In forcing their members to work slowly they use certain cant phrases which sound most plausible until their real meaning is analyzed. They continually use the expression, "Workmen should not be asked to do more than a fair day's work," which sounds right and just until we come to see how it is applied. The absurdity of its usual application would be apparent if we were to apply it to animals. Suppose a contractor had in his stable a miscellaneous collection of draft animals, including small donkeys, ponies, light horses, carriage horses and fine dray horses, and a law were to be made that no animal in the stable should be allowed to do more than "a fair day's work" for a donkey. The injustice of such a law would be apparent to every one. The trades unions, almost without an exception, admit all of those in the trade to membership—providing they pay their dues. And the difference between the first-class men and the poor ones is quite as great as that between fine dray horses and donkeys. In the case of horses this difference is well known to every one; with men, however, it is not at all generally recognized. When a labor union, under the cloak of the expression "a fair day's work," refuses to allow a first-class man to do any more work than a slow or inferior workman can do, its action is quite as absurd as limiting the work of a fine dray horse to that of a donkey would be.