FAMILY PAY

Evening Star, Issue 19143, 9 January 1926, Page 22

FAMILY PAY

FRENCH EXPERIMENT VOLUNTARY WAGE FUNDS SUCCESS SF THE TRIAL In the following article a correspondent of the London * Times ’ gives details of the family allowances experiments in France. The question of family allowances has at length caught the attention of the public (writes the correspondent). Some nasty partisans would even launch it forthwith in the political _ cockpit. The project, like most practical ideas of vide scope, provokes_ controversy by the confusions that cling to it no less than by its intrinsic difficulties. It is odious to some because it seems to belong to the same order of ideas as “ equal pay for equal work,” or to reecho an aggressive feminism- Other critics, nervously alarmed for the pure u economic ” basis of remuneration—namely, work done—take a high line against remuneration according to need. Many another is hostile because he or she scents in family allowances a new phase of etatisme and a now dole. The crusade which Miss Eleanor Rathbone has led from obscurity top-e----cognition has reached its first objective. It baa the ear of a largo public. But how are the aims of the crusaders to be conceived, and what method do they favor? TYRANNY OF PLAT RATES. When certain compromising associations are stripped away the question of family allowances becomes a plain question of wages. The British wage systom is dominated by the device of the flat rate. The young journeymen, newly promoted to full rates; are the equals of their own fathers, their elder brothers, their uncles, and even their grandfathers in respect of income. If they incur family responsibilities their standard of living falls in due course. The last census showed the men over twenty_ as having, on the average, eighteninths of one child of dependent age, while the fathers of families of four or more, who numbered only 6.7 per cent, of the adult men, had no less than 37 per cent, of all children of dependent age to their account. The present dispensation of average or ‘‘ flat ” rates takes very little account of those full quivers. The average, moreover, is not an ordinance of Nature, but an artifice, and a recent one. It sums up the technique of present- | day trade unionism; that is ail. The wage inequalities of bygone times reflected diH'ercnccs not only of skill ami power, but also of need. The same | causes are at work in those increment scales, lasting well into middle-age, which many business and professional employees enjoy. They settle down into good bourgeois husbands and fathers, and some of them into greater efficiency. Desert and need together ensure them the conditions for a decent family life. Many increment scales are hut disguised family allowances, and few scales, if any, are without the allowance motive. The Irish Free State j Government has recently abolished the disguises in its Civil Service by substituting the allowances for the scales. THE SYSTEM IN FRANCE. It is chiefly the wage-earner that is sacrificed to the equality fetish, and the .sacrificial knife is the clumsy mechanism of trade union policy. How, then, is tho tyranny of the flat rale to be broken? Tho melancholy obsession of the present age favors action by the State, Many of tho supporters of family allowances contemplate no other method, The propaganda of the. movement is vaguely bub pervasively Socialistic. The public at large suppose the matter to bo still in tho realm of speculation and theory. In reality it is not so, for one great nation has put family allowances in force on the largest scale, and in certain oilier countries sectional and experimental measures have been adopted. But it is only in Franco that family allowances can bo studied as an established and accepted system. The motives that underlie tho system have boon misjudged in many quarters. It is as false to trace what the French have done exclusively to solicitude for a low birth rate as to rule out such a motive entirely. It the system is to bo judged by its effect on natality it must bo confessed a failure. The truly French element is regard for the family as the unit, even in industry. To do justly and humanely by the families that exist is an imperious policy; to plot and plan for those that do not would be a dreary garble. Solicitude for tho family, good ideals of employership, and tho business motive of increasing good-will in work are the bases of the system. WAR-TIME DEVELOPMENT.

From slow and small beginnings the movement has ripened rapidly in recent years. More than a generation ago some of the French railways, the Nord, the Orleans, and the P.L.M., introdnccd modest bonuses for the dependants of their workpeople. Since 1900 similar bonuses have been spreading in the coal mines. The Government applied the idea, first in the fighting service, and afterwards throughout State employment. The decisive period for private industry of the ordinary typo dates from the pioneer scheme of the llegis-Joya metal works of Grenoble. The bonuses for dependants which M. Romanet established in 1916 soon found imitators in the other metal-working firms of the district. By the end of the war these bonuses Had become a constant feature of the wage awards of the regional Comites do Conciliation, of which M. Albert Thomas was the author. The armistice ended the career of tho comites, but not before both employers and workpeople had become used to the bonuses and prejudiced in their favor. Grenoble again led tho way. The metal firms formed themselves into a caisse de compensation, a co-operative “ pool,” each paying a levy into tho “ pool ” according to its magnitude, and drawing from the pool ” on an agreed scale for its family mem Similar caisscs were formed all over Franco, some on a trade and others on a district basis. Last June these caisses numbered 176. Tbeir federation, the Comite Centra) des Allocations Familiales, is one of the most interesting sociological agencies of France. MAJOR,TTY OF WORKERS INCLUDED.

Three-quarters of all industrial workers are employed under the guarantee of family allowances, and the proportion rises steadily. In factories, mines, railways, and the Government services the system is general or universal. It is spreading rapidly in commerce, and it has begun to spread in agriculture. Vast sums are distributed monthly in bonuses, the amount and conditions of which vary from district to district, and where the caisses are organised on a trade basis, from trade to trade. In the great district caisee of Paris (general section) the bonus for six dependent children is 330 f monthly, [At par rate of exchange 25 francs equal £l.] At Marseilles the bonus is about 20 per cant, higher, at Grenoble about 45 per cent. lower. In some favored districts, where the cost of living is low, the bonuses amount to no more than 2 per cent, of the wages bill. In the industrial north the figure rises to 5 per cent, or G per cent., the figure for the mines being 6 per cent. On the P.L.M. Railway system the figure is 7.6 per cent. The pioneer city of Grenoble has now nine caisses, the

monthly bonnses of which are as follow i

A VOLUNTARY SYSTEM. This great system owes its moral value and ite flexibility to its voluntary basis. What has been done is the fruit of the enlightenment and the enterprise of employers of every sort, public and private, and has been done at their expense. The promptings of humanity have proved to be ‘‘good business” as well. Tho employers are satisfied that the allowances are a reproductive factor and a leaven of reconcilement. The workmen and the workmen’s wives are well satisfied. Certain trade unions held aloof, or were hostile, at the start; some even urged their members to refuse the bonuses. These opinions and manoeuvres are now wholly out of date. Certain theorists, again, have preached compulsion and State control. But with every month the argument for compulsion, such as it is, weakens as tho caisses grow. The one debt of tho system to the State has been the amendment of tho fair wages clauses in Government contracts. Since December, 1032, contractors to Government have been Enquired to he members of a caisse or to pay similar allowances. It is the duty of the Prefects to see that local authorities impose the same condition on their contractors, and in each department the Prefects and the caisses have together fixed the scales to bo paid by contractors.

For on» child. For two children* Thrco. Four. [ Six.

Fr. Fr. Fr. Fc Fr. Fr. Idustria! Caisscs— Engineering „ £0 45 75 105 I3S 165 Building _ _ 20 45 75 105 135 165 Paper-making _ 15 35 65 105 155 805 Glove-making „ 15 SS 60 90 120 15C Wood-working _ 15 35 60 ftO 120 150 Mined ... _ 15 35 60 00 120 150 Commercial Caisses— 1 Wholesale _ 15 35 60 SO 120 ISO Retail _ _ 15 35 60 90 120 150 Cooperatives _ 25 50 80 110 140 170