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Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 46, 23 August 1939, Page 13

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"A B C OF ECONOMICS"

EFFECT ON'WAGES

SKILL ON ASSEMBLY LINE

I "It is as true today as ever it has been and it will be true probably for a long time to come, that the purchasing power of a very large proportion of the community in this country is fixed overseas and we have no control over it," declared Mr. T. O. Bishop, secretary of the New Zealand Employers' Federation, in conciliation council today. He was appearing as advocate for the employers in the coach and motor body builders' dispute and at the time the council was discussing the question of an increased flat rate for men engaged in motor assembly plants. Half the people of this country depended upon the prices of export commodities, Mr. Bishop continued. It did not matter whether the Government guaranteed the price or whether it did not. In the long run all New Zealand got for her export produce was what the people on the other side of the world were prepared to pay for it and that was all we had to spend from that section of the people. POPULAR BELIEF SHATTERED. If every section of the community was going to be put at such a high level of earnings as seriously to affect their product then they could not sell that pi-oduct to those people whose income was fixed overseas. That was the simple A B C of economics which j this country was finding was true. It1 was a popular belief a year or two ■ ago that it could be beaten, but there was the knowledge today that it could not be beaten. A system of manufacture could not be established by putting everyone on j exorbitant rates regardless of the effect on the costs of the product. If it were I done, it would limit the sale of the j product, which meant a limited sale of the workers' own labour, and meant also that the system broke down under its own weight. Apart from.that, said Mr. Bishop, if the men concerned in this instance were put on a flat rale of 3s an hour the tradesmen among them would force their representatives to go back and ask for a differentiation. It was not human nature to expect a man who for years had had a little more because of his skill to accept a flat rate. WHY GO WITHOUT? Mr. N. V. Douglas, Auckland, agent for the workers, said he did- not subscribe to the theory of that school of economics which contended that the prices ruling overseas determined the conditions'of living of the people in I this country. He did not see for one moment why the people in this Dominion should be asked to go without merely because prices overseas fell. However, that was apart from the question they were attempting to settle, namely, that the men employed in as- i serribly work, in speeded-up chain pro-j duction, should be asked to do the first section of work for less money than |an individual who was asked to do more than one section of the work. The employers' contention was that if a man engaged, for example, on car painting did the polishing down, the laying on of the first coats, and then the final coat, he was entitled to a journeyman's rate of pay, but that if a man did one section of assembly he I should be paid less money. The conj tention of the workers was that the skill that man had attained as the result of the methods applied in the assembly works was as high as the skill of the man who had command of, say, five or six operations. That man became as versed in that one operation as the man with command iof five had over any one of the five. Actually, under the chain method of production, men were confined to one activity because the employers knew i t'.. at economically the results of that i must be greater than they would be if [ they allowed a man to take the material and construct the car himself. Therefore they contended that the chain men were specialists in their own line and should be paid a fair wage. Mr. Bishop said he thought the viewpoints of the parties on this matter ; were irreconcilable. He did not think it was possible to agree to a flat rate. The c icil dealt with another clause.