A rational wages system

by Henry Atkinson

Such an arrangement is quite unfair both to the good worker and to the employer, and it gives the employer a very sound reason for opposing the unions on all possible occasions.

But it is worse for the good worker than for the employer, because it affects him in several ways. When two workers are at work side by side, one a good worker and the other a slacker, it is galling for the good man to know that the slacker gets the same wages as himself. It tends to make the good man indifferent to his work, and it needs a good deal of moral courage and great force of character for a man to keep on doing his best under such circumstances, especially when one remembers the great excess of slackers over good men, and how easy it is to find a good excuse for slacking.

The extraordinary thing is that a man's union compels him to slack even if he has no desire to do so. His fellow-unionists keep a watchful eye on a good man, and if he is producing more than a certain quantity he is told to ease up. There is no possible excuse for this attitude, and it has done more to discredit the unions than any other thing. It saps the good worker's morality, and reduces the whole ethics of Labour and wage payment to the lowest possible standard.

Apart from the question of antagonism between the employer and the worker, there is one factor missing, a factor that is all-important even in the best type of day work and under the best conditions. It is that the best method of doing the work is never known.

One man has one idea, another man has another; one man has his own method, another man has a different method; one man has a certain knack of using the special tools required for a particular job, another man has only a general knowledge of their use; one man has done the job many times and knows the short-cuts, another man is new to the job and goes slowly; one man tackles the job haphazard, another spends time in considering the best way of doing it; one man believes that one form of tool is the best for certain metals, another man believes in a different form; one man thinks a job should be done in this way, another man thinks it should be done that way; one shop practice is to do a job in such a manner and on such machines, another shop will do it in a different way on a different type of machine.

And so it goes on....

All the time the foreman is hovering around, urging the men, praising one man for his speed in order to get him to work quickly all the time, but more generally bullying the slow man into working a bit faster. And he settles all matters in an arbitrary manner, which means the job must be done his way, right or wrong!

It cannot be helped. When a worker starts a job, he does not know just what speed his machine must run at for that job. True, experience is a good guide, but it means trying a speed before he can be certain. And trying a speed means a certain amount of care and watchfulness; then it probably means making adjustments of speed and tool. This means stoppages, readjustments, retrials, and an all-round loss of time and efficiency.

Now, is the man a better workman for all this? If it proved eventually that all men became of the same opinion as regards speeds, forms of tools, and methods of working, and if all men became highly efficient, one could at least say that the result justified the method, in spite of the enormous waste of time and talk and temper. But, as a matter of fact, one rarely gets two workmen of the same opinion or of the same proficiency, and a man never turns out as much work as he is capable of.