FIVE-DAY WEEK

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 March 1935, Page 2

FIVE-DAY WEEK

CANNOT BE RUSHED. The problem of reducing hours of work in industry is usually approached from the standpoint of the reformer who seeks to abolish unemployment by arithmetic. He assumes that if one worker in six is unemployed, all that need be done is to reduce working hours by one-sixth and thereby make room for those out of work. It looks so simple at first that anybody might be excused for wondering how employers and politicians can be so obstinate or so stupid that they do not immediately provide work for everybody. Unhappily, none of our problems is so easily solved. There would be great difficulties m the way of arranging suddenly throughout industry for six persons to work where five had worked before. It is rash to take for granted that a man whose hours are reduced from forty-eight ‘to forty necessarily produces only five-sixths of his foi-mer output. . . , A few months ago I visited a German factory where many thousands of workers were employed, writes Lord Trent, in an English paper. By State decree working hours had been reduced by 16 per cent., yet the total of new staff found necessary to maintain output at the old level was less than 1 per cent. Assuming that means could be found to make the necessary readjustments and that additional workers were drafted into industry, there remains the question of wages. Either the same total of wages will be paid for the same output, in which case every worker has to submit to a reduction (an impracticable proposal)- or the same individual weekly wages will continue to be paid and the total wage bill must be increased. Who pays this bill? There is only one source of wages—sales.

Broadly speaking, no increase of the wages total is possible unless there is an increase of the sales total. If hours of work are to be reduced without corresponding reduction of Wages, and at the same time new workers are to be drafted into industry, the money to pay them must come from the only source from which industry gets money—the consuming public. ‘ This brings me to my main point. No policy on hours of employment has the slightest chance of success unless it takes into consideration all the factors concerned, particularly the question of costs.in relation to prices and public demand. Any policy that tends to reduce demand will defeat its own object. How then are we to tackle the permanent problem raised by the displacement of men by machinery and scientific organisation? We have been confronted with this problem for more than a century, but the rate of displacement has been accelerated recently. In the past there have been two ways of solving the problem; reduction of hours of work, and vastly increased consumption. For cheaper production leads to greater demand. FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE Although we have come down from seventy working hours a week to fewer than fifty, the reduction has been made slowly, reluctantly, and unsystematically. Now the problem must be met deliberately. Need for human labour is being reduced, and increasing sales tend to counterbalance the reduction. It should be the work of a management to preserve a balance that avoids displacement of work people. One step in this delicate* proces of adjustment is the reduction of individual working hours.

In my firm we believe our primary aim must be the prosperity of the firm as indicated by sales. In that prosperity three sections are interested — the public, the workers (from the newest fourteen-year-old recruit to the directors) and the shareholders. ’ I am concerned now’ only with the workers.

Recently we instituted an experimental five-day week in Boots Nottingham factories and offices. This was only one item in our policy of steadily improving the conditions in which the firm’s employees work and live.

I It is not possible to enumerate all lour activities in this direction, but mention should be made of our factory school, our health and welfare service, our games and sports club, lour factory wage rates, which. In nearly every case, are higher than trade union rates, and the pension ' scheme that we hope shortly to put into operation on the basis of a fund accumulated over many years. All these, as well as the new works, opened last year, which were designed to provide the most pleasant and healthy conditions for the workers, could not have been attained except from the proceeds of sales. The five-day week experiment proved so successful that it is being continued indefinitely. The 5,000 employees highly appreciate the complete break in their work from Friday evening to Monday morning, and a higher state of efficiency has resulted. But. as was shown by Sir Richard Redmayne in the report of the scheme because we have made a success of this innovation it does not by any means follow that the change could be made generally. Our experience shows how many difficulties there would be in introducing

such reform, except in strictly favourable conditions that make it possible to leave production costs unaffected. Working hours will inevitably decrease, but this tendency should be deliberately encouraged to the extent to which it is practicable without damage to the industry in the markets in which it has to compete. The extension of leisure, whether during or after a working life, demands <l capacity for worth-while use of that leisure, and this involves a responsibility for giving workers opportunities of developing interests for spare time. The best way in which Governments can help is not by imposing conditions that may be wholly unsuitable to particular industries, but by doing everything possible to get employers to act on the late Lord Leverhulme’s dictum that —“The most prosperous firms have always been those in which the well-being of the workers is regarded as a matter of prime impor tance.”