CLASSIFICATION OF WORKERS.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 119, 15 November 1902, Page 7 (Supplement)

CLASSIFICATION OF WORKERS.

TO THE EPITOB. Sir, — With regard to your article on " Classification of Workers " in your jssue of 241h October, traversing my letter of the 17th, I consider that I was quite justified in assuming that you advocated a scheme of classification wholly below the standard, because it ought to be known that "at the present time there is nothing to prevent employers classifying their employees above the minimum fixed by the Arbitration Court. In fact, this seems to have been the intention of the Court- in fixing the wage, as the words used in clause 2 of the existing carpenters' award are "journeymen carpenters and joiners shall be paid not less than Is 4d per hour." Unionists and workers in the trade generally consider this minimum wage to be the lowest recognised remuneration for workmen sufficiently competent to call themselves journeymen. We refuse to look on it as the average wage, and it is clear enough to us that all that is required to complete classification is for employers to pay to their more efficient men something more than this minimum, and- so provide " that incentive to efficiency above the average or that additional wage which might he sufficient inducement to exert themselves to their full power" — an idea which seems to bulk largely in the opinions of business men, and which •we are not likely to object to, although we hold that any " incentive " of this kind is the merest absurdity. Employers say that under the minimum wage they have to pay some of their men 'more than they earn, but if they were to classify the more efficient men above the' minimum it would do away at once with opportunities for such unfavourable comparison as to the merits of workmen, and prove to us that they are really in earnest; in their protestations that they hSye no desire to reduce wages. But, at 'the same time, seeing that they admit that even when paid equal -wages some men do more than others, we fail to see that they establish their case as to the necessity for an "incentive to efficiency." I would also point out that clause S of the existing carpenters' award provides for really incompetent men being classified below the minimum, and .many men are so classified now; but it seems to me that the desire is to classify them still lower, because if you undertake to reduce those who are no more than competent to earn the minimum — those that the employers complain are not worth the money — then you must naturally reduce a step lower those at present classed as incompetent, hut who hold their present position because those next above them are paid the existing minimum. You propose to find what you consider the necessary " incentive to efficiency "by reducing the " incentive " of the less fortunate — in other words, by reducing the minimum or cutting down the wages of a considei'able proportion of workers. I think the proposal needs only to be stated in this way to show its manifest absurdity. I am quite sure that unions could not classify their members to suit the employers. Employers would do that every time, and more than that, different employers would classify the same men differently, just as it suited themselves. Employers are ' not cast in the same mould any more than employees, and just as they differ tremendously at times in their estimates in regard to work of all kinds, so they differ even now in their estimate of their employees' capabilities. So* that this system, 'once it recognised varying rates of wages, would very largely bieak down the union's control over the wages paid to its members — break down collective bargaining, in fact, and force individual members to quarrel with every new employer about the class to Avhich they belonged, for unfortunately ■work is not steady, • and men are continually changing from one employer to another. In regard to my remarks about the t lowest recognised rate becoming the maximum, I have little more to add. When one'e the Arbitration Court fixes several different »ates of wages, the inevitable would happen when trade slackened off, and it would* be practically impossible to prove any infringement of the award with employers doing the classification, as they would do so long as trade is run on its present competitive individualist basis, because it is impossible to dictate to employers how much different workmen are worth to them. Apologising for trespassing so much on your space and thanking you in anticipation. — 1 am, etc., CARPENTER. Wellington, ,28th October, 1902.