HIGH WAGES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17157, 6 October 1926, Page 7

HIGH WAGES

DETROIT’S 40 DOLLARS THE PIECE-WORK STANDARD UNION’S SWAY LIMITED Where piecework is the standard means of production, and a man receives pav for what lie is able to do. there is not much room for trade unionism as it is known throughout the British Empire. Whether such a state ol affairs is to the general advantage i f a country or not. the workers of the United States find that this piece-work standard means the possibility of higher rates of pay. In Detroit, the home ot the motor industry in America, the average weekly wage among the factory hands is about 40 dollars. Some men get more, and ottiprs less, but 40 dollars is the average. In English money, that means a little more than £8 per week, a figure a good deal beyond that secured even to Australian workers by their system' of minimum rates and frequent revisions. Mr. Harold Renner, a Gisborne resident who has spent some years in the United States, has returned with a keen appreciation of the ability of American labor to maintain a high output, under the stimulus of piece rates, and states that while many British engineers and titters are engaged m the factories in Detroit, in which town lie spent most of his time, they find it hard at first to adapt themselves to conditions different, from those they left in the Old Country. ON OUTPUT BASIS. “The factory hand in Detroit is well paid,” remarked Mr Benner to a reporter to-day. "He works on piecerates, and receives pay on the basis of his capacity to work. Unless he can produce the goods, lie is not worth the good wages which are available to the skilful worker. The average pay of the Detroit worker is about 40 dollars, and some of the men working with their hands in the production of motor parts earn up to 70 and 80 dollars. It is true that the work is not what we call steady. There are periods duijng which the models of cars produced in the different factories undergo changes, and during those periods parts of the staffs have to be put on short hours. A man might work for four days one week, and seven the next, but while he is on the job he goes at express rate, there is no room in file factories for inefficient- labor, and the men do not limit themselves to an eight-hour day. Some have to work for only eight hours, hut the generality make it nine. They want to make all they can, and an eight-hour day is no good to them.” NO BIG UNIONS. Discussing industrialism in America, as exemplified in the big motor works of Detroit, Mr. Renner stated that there was no unionism as we know it in New Zealand. There were unions, certainly, hut they did not act jointly. Union labor and non-union labor worked side by side, without friction, and there was no big combinations of unions to take up the claims of t lie men. The latter were too busy making good money, and spending it, to bother about- trades unionism beyond a certain point. For instance. Hie unions had not succeeded in imposing a limit to nut put on the part of the individual. During the last few years the piecework principle had enabled the works to double their output, and yet maintain the same rates of pay as before. In effect each man was now doing twice as much in a day’s work as he did a few years ago, and his wages have increased in proportion. The men themselves had no time for the slow worker, and all were busy with their own concerns. To illustrate the indifference of one class of worker to the trials of another, Mr. Benner quoted the hard-coal strike, which fizzled our because the public turned to soft- coal, and throughout the country installed the means of utilising the soft coal. ‘.‘lt rather looks as though the lmrd-coal men have dug the grave of their own industry,” commented the Gisborneite.