Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 1927. AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 169, 16 June 1927, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 1927. AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT.

The South Australian Government has decided to pave the way for introducing the policy of payment by results in the civil service of that State. The decision is not altogether unexpected because, in his pre-election addresses, the present Premier of South Australia, then holding the Opposition leadership, promised that should he and his friends be returned to office he would introduce piecework—that is payment by results —in industry. His policy in that respect was endorsed by both his own immediate supporters —the Liberals—and the Country Party candidates, who had jointly arrayed themselves against the Labour Government under the Pact banner. The desirability of introducing payment by results has been repeatedly discussed both in this country and Australia during the last few years. The labour unions, for reasons best known to themselves, have in many cases resolutely opposed any such assessment of labour values as the return to, or adoption of, piecework rates would bring about. Yet it is manifest that many workers are penalised by the limitation in their earning power the hourly, daily or weekly wage rate entails, and, because they are debarred from working to their full capacity by the now common enough practice of having to regulate their movements to those of men who are capable only of earning the minimum wage, which, as a consequence, becomes too often the.maximum wage also. The Australian Industrial Commission, which has been visiting the United States inquiring into labour conditions in the chief industrial centres, and investigating the conditions under which the employees work, does not appear to have been working altogether harmoniously, the labour representatives on the commission showing a tendency to discount in advance the opinions of their colleagues, who have been favourably impressed by the position of the workers under the piecework and “open shop” system. The objections of which we have heard so far appear to be based upon the idea that piece-

work leads to “speeding up” to the injury of the worker’s health, and that the massed production methods adopted by the Detroit manufacturers, etc., have a deadening' effect upon the workers with the tendency to jnake them mere machines. Be that as it may, the workers appear well contented with their lot; they earn bigger wages, live in greater comfort, enjoy shorter working hours and are, generally speaking, better off than the workers of other countries. Earlier investigators into working conditions in the United States, in the persons of Mr Bertram Austin and Mr W. Francis Lloyd, when reporting upon the subject made the very definite statement that in the United States there is a widespread conviction that it is better labour should be rewarded by wages bearing some relation to output, rather than by a fixed wage, the latter being paid indiscriminately to good and indifferent workers alike, although the latte]' naturally are apt to find themselves out of employment in slack seasons. The return to piece rates—that is payment by results—appears as a necessary preliminary to a more decided re-' duction in the cost of living than is possible under existing conditions, and, after all, it is only a fair way of rewarding a man for his labour. Why should a man who is capable of earning, say, £lO a week at his trade be tied down to £4 or £5, simply because certain of his fellow workmen are incapable of earning more, or are too indolent or incompetent to do so.

PAYMENT BY RESULTS. The Butler Government in Soutli Australia does not intend, however, to proceed altogether on the American lines. Mr Butler believes in upholding the arbitration principle with its guaranteed minimum wage—a principle that, if known, is hardly recognised in the United States and certainly has no practical application there. The State Government, as a model employer, desires piimarily to demonstrate by actual operation the general advantages of the system. Piecework is, of course, not unknown in Australia, although, as we have said, the tendency with the majority of the labour unions, if not all of their number, is to discourage, where they do not actuaally ban, its application. Miners, shearers, and workers in the meat freezing and sugar industries have, in many cases, accepted it and continue to do so, and it is, we believe, admitted that unionism is generally stronger and more efficient in industries adopting piecework than in many others controlling manual activities. In Queensland, at least, piecework wages are higher than the basic wage. That being the case, it does not appear that there is any danger that, under a constitutional arbitration system and a live unionism, the workers are likely to suffer under a policy such as the South Australian Government proposes. The piecework plan has been suggested more than once in the various Australian Arbitration Courts. When the Pull Federal Arbitration Court granted the 44-hour week, on the majority vote of the judges) to the Amalgamated Engineering Union of Australia, Mr Justice Lukin, in the minority report, pointed out that fewer working hours meant a lessening of production that was likely to injure Australia in commercial competition with some overseas nations, and he suggested that some encouragement ought to be given to individual workers to put forth compensating effort to make up for the reduced hours of working. In the Victorian Arbitration Couri, again, Chief Justice Detlibridge said that “Payment by results must be recognised as a legitimate thing, without which the 44-liour week could not be safely continued.” A similar view was taken by “Industrialist,” who contributes the Labour notes to a leading Queensland daily and who declared that “the daily wage rate is doomed, and in most industries a wage, based on the productivity of the industry and the employee, will rule. And (he asked) could anything be fairei ?” The development of the South Australian Government scheme w ill be watched with interest by all who believe in the payment of labour to its full earning capacity on the piecework system.