452 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION O. 



The adjustment of the wages to be paid to the workman is a most difficult 

 one. There are three principal ways of paying workmen : on time, on piece, 

 and on bonus. 



On time is the only way of paying a man who is on various classes of work, 

 where the fair time required for each job is not known, and in many cases the 

 most highly skilled men are on such work and ae a result only make time wages. 

 This reisults often in the highly skilled man making less money than the less 

 skilled man who is on repetition work and as a consequence is working on piece 

 or bonus, and this is obviously unfair. For example, a man may have the 

 setting up and adjusting of a nmiiber of machines on repetition work, and he 

 often makes less money than the less skilled men under him who are on piece or 

 bonus, although their nominal rate of wages is less than his. 



Again, highly skilled erectors who go outside the works to erect machinery, 

 often worth thousands of pounds, and set it to work, are only paid on time, and 

 often make less money than their fellows who are on piece inside the works. 



The adjusting of piece prices is a most difficult one. They should be adjusted 

 so as to be fair both to master and man, but too often such fixing of prices is 

 left to subordinate officials who have in many cases their own axe to grind. 

 There should in all works be a special department for such fixing of prices, 

 and once a price is fixed it should not be altered without good reason. The 

 practice of cutting prices by the masters in the past is, in the opinion of the 

 writer, largely responsible for the present limitation of output by the men about 

 which we hear so much. There is a rule that if a man makes more than time and 

 half or time and third the price of the job is to be cut. If the price has been 

 fairly fixed why should it be reduced because the man makes large wages due to 

 his skill and industry ? The larger the output from his vice or lathe the better 

 for the master, as he is getting a larger output from his plant with a certain 

 capital expenditure, and thereby establishment charges are reduced. This is 

 especially the ease in machine work, as the hourly value of the machine employed 

 often far exceeds the wages of the workman employed. 



A fair rating for machine tools is 4rf. per hour per lOOl. value, and as the 

 time rating of the man is generally about QcL, it is easily seen that if the 

 average value of the machine tools exceed 225/. machine charges exceed time 

 wages, and the average value of machine tools is generally largely in excess 

 of this figure, in fact often about double it. It is therefore obvious that it is 

 much more important to get large output than to pay small wages. 



The result of this ' time and half ' rule is that a good man, by working up to 

 the limit of his capacity, 'spoils the job' for the next man who comes along 

 and may not be of the same calibre as the first man. It has therefore been 

 found advisable and necessary by the workmen to limit the output of all men 

 to a certain standard, and this results in the end by the pace being set by the 

 slowest man on a particular job. 



A fair bonus system is perhaps the ideal way of paying men, but here, again, 

 although the times for a job are supposed to be fixed and unalterable, in too 

 many cases they have been altered by various devices, and as a result the 

 system is looked on with suspicion by the workman. 



Gradually bit by bit the pernicious doctrine that the less work done by a 

 man the more employment there will be has grown up, he not seeing that the 

 cheaper an article can be produced the larger will be the sale for it and the 

 better it will be able to compete with the products, not only of other producers 

 in this country but of those abroad. And also that very cheapness, combined 

 with good quality, induces the sale for sucli articles to be large. 



Laziness is inherent in man, and on an average no man will work unless 

 compelled to do so, and still less will work his best imless there is a great 

 inducement. This is true not only of the working-man but of all other classes. 

 Therefore the policy of ' Ca' Canny ' has been only too readily adopted on the 

 ground not only that it was pleasant for the man himself but also he believed 

 that it tended to the welfare of his fellow-workmen. 



The writer has very reluctantly come to the conclusion that the workman 

 of to-day is not doing as much work as was done some thirty years ago when 

 he was in the shops, and not only this, but that timekeeping is not as good. 

 In this connection, however, it must be remembe-ed that excessive overtime 

 inevitably leads to bad timekeeping. 



