The Wanganui Chronicle. FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 1940. THE IMPORTANT FACTOR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 180, 2 August 1940, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 1940. THE IMPORTANT FACTOR

| li e important lactor m any endeavour is nw uii’iiuii aunuuv which is held in doing the task. An angler will trudge along difficult river banks or wade into lakes for the purpose ol: casting a fly in the hope of catching a fish .which could be bought for a shilling or two. A mountaineer will ascend rough scoria faces in order to ascend to a summit, a cricketer will stand in the boiling sun for half a day fielding a cricket ball when it comes his way. Each of these men will endure discomfort and glory in it. Ask those same men to earn their living by doing the selfsame tasks or others equally inconvenient, and they would consider themselves to be very hardly done by. It would be a splendid thing if the pleasure which comes to a man in his recreation could be captured in his working hours. It is useless to pretend that this can be done, however, for it is not possible. Another interest must be awakened in order to spur men on to continuous working endeavour. Some men can hope for fame in their work—the painter, the singer, the writer, the lawyer and the politician—and the hope of fame is an excellent spur. In.the general workaday world, however, it is not possible for the average rank-and-file member of the army of production to hope for fame. The work of many operatives must necessarily be the same every day of the week, and every week of the year. The monotony of their working lives is something against which they rightly rebel when they happen to have a fair measure of imagination. When goods were manufactured, that is, made by hand with tools, the individual workman saw the progress of his work in the transference of raw material into finished goods. This gave him an interest in his work and stimulated his endeavour. Such progressive work stopped him from going stale to the same degree as a machine minder in a modern fabrication plant goes stale to-day. It should be remembered, nevertheless, that an old-time craftsman endured a great deal of heavy labour, and he was a long time engaged in one particular task, and it is consequently an exaggeration to consider the eraftsworker as one who found a satisfying outlet for his artistic expression in his work. Seme men did, such as the individual jeweller and the like, but the house painter who wielded a brush got no greater thrill out of his task than does the modern operator of a paintgun. It is quite an easy mistake to make to assume that the oldtime worker was an artist. The boot repairer of to-day may find dissimilar tasks in repairing boots, but the variation is not enough to break the monotony of the work as a whole. There are two methods of overcoming the drag on the production effort caused by staleness or industrial fatigue: one is to enlarge the range of function, and the other is lo enlarge the range of financial interest. The overcoming of the industrial fatigue involves a problem of work management. The changing of workers round from one task to another in order that they shall not have their facilities dulled by task monotony must be clone without a decrease in efficiency; for the changeover is engaged in for the opposite purpose, namely, of increasing efficiency. The enlarging of the range of financial interest is also a task of management, but more one of policy than of production technique. The worker who sells a week’s work for a week’s wage will very soon sell as little as he need and look for as much as he can get, and when this state of mind is reached it is to be described as neutral ground. It brooks no interference with his own interests, it exercises no concern in the good of the organisation of which he is a member. Snell a neutral attitude is dangerous because it can easily be tipped either way; for good* on the side of co-operation, for evil on the side of actual sabotage or permissive destruction. It has been demonstrated that it does not cost an employer anything to enlist this important factor of the right mental attitude on the side of co-operation; but conversely, it has been demonstrated that the enlarging of the field of interest of the employee by extending the range of function and enlarging the financial interest by the payment of a bonus or by a profitsharing scheme, actually pays higher dividends than when the employer and employee are occupying separate camps in the industrial field. At the present time, when the industrial efficiency of the workers of the Dominion should be higher than it is, it would be worth while if employers’ associations and employees’ unions would address their minds to the practical subjects of working out plans for enlarging and varying the work of production, and of sharing in the risks of profit and of loss involved in any industrial undertaking, instead of the workers being content simply to ask for more wages and the employers to oppose them, and leave the rest of the problem untouched.