A rational wages system

by Henry Atkinson

(c) Scientific Management and the Reward System.

This Reward System, when based on time study, is a part of what is called "scientific management," and cannot be carried on without proper departments for standardising products and methods of production, planning and routing the work, attending to tool repair and replacement, examining and maintaining machine tools and driving gear, keeping stores and stocks, inspecting the product, costing production accurately, preventing waste, keeping the sales and publicity department up to a high standard, and watching every phase of the work so as to keep everything up to a high pitch of efficiency. All this does not directly concern the worker. His chief interest lies in whether his conditions of work are improved, whether he suffers less fatigue, whether he gets more wages, whether he does his fellow-worker no injury in earning high rewards If he is satisfied on these points, then all the rest does not concern him.

Now, scientific management is not some fanciful suggestion that the worker may accept if it pleases him, and refuse if it doesn't. It is here already, and the war will cause an enormous increase in the number of firms adopting it. And where scientific management is introduced, efficiency in production follows—that is what it is for. The point is, is the worker going to accept it and its consequences, understanding it, seizing its good points, rejoicing in increased efficiency, increased wages, and increased opportunities of a satisfactory life which these things provide, or is he going to resent it and try to fight it as his fathers fought against the introduction of machinery?

If he chooses the latter course, it means bitter antagonism, suspicion, Labour troubles, instability of employment, low wages, loss of earnings, and the whole of the intellectual forces of the country will be against him, because the conditions after the war will demand industrial peace if we are to maintain the commercial position we had before the war. And in the end it will only mean a sullen acceptance of defeat.

Would it not be better for the worker to get a clear understanding of the system, welcome it for its advantages, and reserve all his strength and power to adjust and preserve the bases upon which the payment of labour depends in the various trades of the country?

It is quite true that the worker will work harder and will produce considerably more; it is equally true that prices will be reduced in consequence, and therefore more men will be required to make more articles for the increased demand that is bound to follow the reduction in price. In the long run, the system will mean employing more men than would be employed under present methods, and they will be men of high efficiency, and on the average of a better class, such men as will greatly increase our national assets, and such as will maintain our reputation in the markets of the world for the excellence and durability of our manufactures.

In the clash of interests that will prevail for a time when the war is over, the worker will have to decide whether to be the controller of his own destinies or whether to become servile. Much depends on the attitude of the skilled worker towards the capitalist. The burden of debt left by the war must be shouldered, and both interest and repayment of loans must come from somewhere. Unless the worker is to be ground to the dust, he must assert himself; but he will be utterly ignored if a selfish and stubborn attitude be adopted, and he will be driven by stress of the nation's adversity to accept what is offered to him by the more far-seeing and powerful members of the State. This means losing all the freedom that he fought for in the great war, and it will put back the worker's progress for an indefinite number of years.

Let him follow up the great sacrifices he has made during the war by an intelligent understanding of the altered conditions, and the worker will take an honoured place in the affairs of the State and share its responsibilities and its benefits. If he is to take that place—and no man has a better right to it—if he is to have a voice in the councils of the nation that will compel attention and respect, will it come by antagonism to progress and indifference to the general welfare, or by organisation and efficiency?

The reply is obvious.

The organisation is the duty of the trade-unions, and the Reward System is a method of providing the efficiency. These will compel the worker to take a greater interest in his surroundings and in the way he is governed. He will resent inefficiency in civic and national matters when he realises how he suffers from its consequences and what perils it brings upon him.