The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, February 12th, 1936. MR BISHOP ON WORKING TIME.

Grey River Argus, 12 February 1936, Page 4

The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, February 12th, 1936. MR BISHOP ON WORKING TIME.

The introduction of the forty houp week for men on public works adds interest to the remarks yesterday of the Secretary of the*New Zealand Employers’ ( Federation on the principle involved. Mr T. 0. Bishop told the Wellington Rotary Club he believes that the only effective method of using shorter workingtime so. as to relieve unemployment is to shorten the working life of people. On more than one ground this conclusion is open to question. Tie does not deny the desirability of shorter hours, but questions its utility in the existing order of capitalistic industri alisni. An obvious remark is that humanity in the mass, as individually is of more importance than any system of production, exchange and distribution. Machines have gained the upper hand over most men, but only because other men have so used machinery as to bring this about. Mr Bishop bases his general view on the fact that at the Geneva Convention British and other employer delegates, including himself, opposed hours reduction from a fear it would increase costs. He holds on his own part the opinion that a forty-hour week in any particular country would stimulate the machanisation of industry, and thus increase unemployment ultimately to perhaps a greater extent than . the shortening of hours would reduce it. Thus he claims that internally there would be for this country no benefit; and likewise externally, because greater production cost would leave us less able to compete against countries with longer hours. It is a gratuitous assumption, however, that here oi’ anywhere else the capitalist delays by a day the mechanisation of industry in order to limit unemployment. The system puts already as high a premium on machanisation as it is possible to imagine. Rationalisation already has turned men into machines, and more than anything else machinery is already shortening the working life of the operative. The most keenly competitive

country of any, Japan, is using in industry a larger proportion oi human labour than any other country, and this beeaush hours are there relatively longer tluin elsewhere. In Australia there is just now the strike against long hours at the Port Kembla ironworks, where six hours is enough, and where overtime must have the same effect as in the same industry as in America, rendering men too old for work at the age of forty. If the employer counts his cash costs, must the worker never count his loss of vitality? Must he be resigned to a progressive shortening of his working life on that account? The query is prompted by Mr Bishop’s suggestion that the human factor in industry comes second to the material—that the machine is so much man’s master that the more man would resist the domination of mechanisation the greater will that domination become. Surely that is a false philosophy, if not of capitalism, at least of life? The most highly industrialised countries may have given it currency, but even they' are to-day the worst worried about the results of that philosophy. One in four is on the dole at New York. Many adults in Britain have never been off the dole. Mechanisation only grows by what feeds it. New Zealand has rural industry where hours necessarily vary, but the particular industries Mr Bishop represents are not competing on oversea markets, but are protected on local markets. It is so with all of the protected industries all over the world. They are highly and yet offer the greatest scope for shortening

hours through the protection that tariffs give them. The costs argu-' ment is misleading. It is the profits argument under a disguise. The costs argument used to be advanced by the New Zealand exporter, but he has found the cuts policy inimical Io prosperity, and to-day is as eager as the worker for a guaranteed return for his labour. The greatest foe of shorter working hours is probably the capitalist whose own working hours arc just what he pleases. The competition on outside markets may be a governing consideration in hours regulation, but increasingly to-day countries arc supplying their own needs, and so using the bulk of their production where competition can be regulated as regards working hours. This change shows the possibility of others, and one such should b e an early mitigation of industrial slavery. The five day week is gaining ground, and even if il should lengthen, instead of shortening, th e working life of people, it will do more to lessen than to increase unemployment. New Zealand is a country where this should be demonstrable as quickly as any other. Mr Bishop therefore ought to allow for more than the attitude of the industrial capitalists who meantime have de. cided the issue at Geneva.