The most controverted item in trade-union policy, the limitation of individual output, is also partly actuated by the same motive.Few things make the ordinary business man more indignant than the trade-union regulations in certain trades which restrain stronger or quicker workers from putting forth their full productive energy.They denounce alike its dishonesty and its bad economy.It is based, they say, upon the 'lump of labour' fallacy, the false notion that there exists an absolutely limited amount of employment, or work to be done, and that if the stronger or quicker men do more than their share, the others will go short.This refusal to allow each man to do his best, like the related refusal to get the full work out of new labour-saving machinery, appears monstrously perverse and wicked.But, though partly animated by short-sighted economic views, this policy is not entirely to be thus explained.The levelling down of the output of all workers to a standard has partly for its object the establishment of greater evenness of income among the workers in a trade.At any given time in a given mill, or factory town, the actual amount of available employment is limited, and for the time it is true that by limitation of individual output a larger number of workers are employed, and a larger number of working families are provided with a normal wage, than would have been the case if a certain number of men were encouraged to an unrestricted energy and unlimited overtime.
In the long run, it may be better to encourage full individual liberty of output, even in the interest of the aggregate of employment, but the restraints to which i here allude become more intelligible when they are regarded as attempts to enforce a common class weekly wage by means of an even distribution of employment.
A minimum piece-wage, based on a moderate computation of the weekly output per worker, and accompanied by a substantial security of full regular employment, would in effect place the piece-worker in the position of a salaried employee.But, of course, a minimum piece-wage, however high, does not go far to this end, unless security of tenure at fairly full employment is obtained.The problem of un- and under-employment and of irregular employment is now beginning to be recognised in its full social gravity.A weekly wage of bare efficiency with regular employment is socially far superior to a higher average wage accompanied by great irregularity of work.The former admits stability of modes of living and ready money payments: it conduces to steadiness of character and provision for the future without anxiety.Rapid and considerable fluctuations of wages, even with full employment, are damaging to character and stability of standards: but irregularity of employment is the most destructive agency to the character, the standard of comfort, the health and sanity of wage-earners.The knowledge that he is liable at any time, from commercial or natural causes that lie entirely outside his control, to lose the opportunity to work and earn his livelihood, takes out of a man that confidence in the fundamental rationality of life which is essential to soundness of character.Religion, ethics, education, can have little hold upon workers exposed to such powerful illustrations of the unreason and injustice of industry and of society.
The regularisation of industry, so as to afford substantial guarantees of full regular employment, thus ranks with the minimum wage as the most substantial contribution towards the substitution of salary for wages, which the organic law of Distribution requires.The State is beginning to cooperate with the Labour Movement for the attainment of this social object, stimulating employers to organise their industries so as to furnish a more even volume of employment.
