“REASONABLE PAY”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19841, 16 May 1927, Page 10

“REASONABLE PAY”

THE BASIS OF REAL WELFARE BRITISH AND AMERICAN METHODS. LONDON, April 20. Co-ordination inside the factory was discussed when the conference of works directors, managers, foremen, and forewomen met in Balliol College, Oxford. Mr Percy S. Brown, deputy director of the International Management Institute, Geneva, who introduced; the subject, argued that we should chart our factory organisation and adopt careful scientific planning. He expressed the view that piece work as a basis of industry was sound. A man thereby got his reward in proportion to his effort. But the rates must not be cut. In America the National Association of Foremen had been organised. He thought this was a most significant start, and he believed its adoption would be possible in ths country. Mr C. F. Merriam, managing director of the British Xylonite Company, said that before any company could think of effective co-operation with its workpeople it must be certain that the earnings of the employees were reasonable and the conditions were decent. Reasonable rates of pay were, he was convinced, the basis of co-operation. Without that basis all other welfare provisions merely affected the surface of a man ’s Ife. They might secure outwardly contented workers, but never real co-operation unless they paid proper wages. He gave details of a series of internal arrangements in his works, such as shops’ committees to consider differences which arose, a savings bank scheme, profit-sharing, ard other things, as the result of which the happiest, relations existed between the firm and their employees. Mr R. Olzendam. the European representative of the Industrial Relations Counsellors Incorporated, Now York, spoke on American industrial relations. “During the past two weeks,” Tie said. “I have been through two of our industrial plants in Britain every day. and I have seen there the answers to your industrial troubles. What you need is publicity as we have it in America. You have no need to send deputations to ’America on the secret of high wages there. High wages don’t do it. What we think we have arrived at in America is the, recognition that a man is a human being; that he is not an animal nor a vegetable. In Britain I am perfectly sure I have met the minds and the brains which, if brought together, have an answer to the questions which are facing industry. Ono has not got it, another has pot got it, but altogether they have got