The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE InCOBPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 155, 4 July 1927, Page 6

The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE InCOBPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

Jor the cause that lacks assistance, tor the wrong that needs resistance, For the future iti the distance, And the good that tee can do• MONDAY, JULY 4, 1927. PIECE-WORK AND LABOUR. The Federal Arbitration Court has just delivered a decision which is, unfortunately, much more likely to produce discord than harmony in industrial circles in Australia. In \ iew of the strong demand for a reduction of hours, the Court has given certain trades in most of the States a 44-hours week, to be paid for at the same rate as for a 4S-hours week. But as an inducement to the workers to increase production, and thus enable the industries concerned to bear the additional strain thrown upon their resources, the Court has decided to introduce a clause into the award which "would permit contracts for other than ordinary wages." This means the introduction of piece-work, and it is not surprising to learn that strong disapproval of this innovation has already been expressed. No doubt payment by results would, as the Federal Court has suggested, tend largely to increase the output of industry. That is the avowed purpose of the system, and the chief reason that commends it to the approval of the employer. But in the eyes of the wage-earner payment by results has always tended in the direction of "sweating"—that is to say, its effect has been to encourage the worker to unduly strenuous exertion, without providing any guarantee that he will share in the greater surplus of wealth that he helps to produce. The evils of industrial over-strain are undoubted both to the individual directly concerned and to his weaker or less efficient fellow workers who strive in vain to keep up to the pace he sets, and in the long run, so its opponents hold, piece-work tends to inflict injuries upon the workers that cannot be off-set by any temporary increase in earning power. There are industries which, from their nature, practically necessitate some form of payment by results. For this reason, in the British cotton industry, for instance, piecework is now an established feature of the system. But even in Britain the objections to piece-work have always been strongly held and emphatically expressed, and the opposition to the system has long been strongly pronounced on this side of the world, where befors Wages Boards and Arbitration Courts and the minimum wage were established "sweating" had manifested its noisome presence in no uncertain way. The experiences of the Australian Industrial Commission which recently visited the •United States have a direct bearing on this controversy. The Commissioners were undoubtedly impressed by the extraordinary productive capacity of the American skilled worker and the high rate of output maintained. But the Labour members of the Commission have already made it clear that, in their opinion, the basis of the American system is payment by results, and that this method of wage-earning finds no favour in their sight. In America they have seen that the unions have relatively little power* that Labour organisation is still limited in scope, and that the mass of the workers are still helplessly dependent upon the will of the employer. They attribute these facts to the piece-work system, and, taking them in conjunction with the heavy physical strain thrown upon the worker and the tendency of the system to reduce the wageearner to the status of a well-oiled machine, they have clearly made up their minds to have nothing to do with payment by results in

Australia.