SHORTER HOURS FOR WORKERS

Evening Star, Issue 22143, 25 September 1935, Page 8

SHORTER HOURS FOR WORKERS

MEANS OF ABSORBING UNEMPLOYED PROPOSAL EXAMINED “ It is easy to show by reasoned argument that a shortening of working hours without a reduction in wages must result in higher costs and so be injurious to industry, but the truth is that the facts absolutely defeat the well-reasoned arguments,” said the president of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce (Mr F. W. Hobbs) in his address at the annual dinner of the chamber last evening (says the ‘ Press ’)• Expressing a view favourable to shorter working hours, Mr Hobbs advanced the proposal as one of several for the solution of the Dominion’s unemployment problem. “ For a century or more hours have been steadily reduced and wages steadily increased, and at the samd time greater prosperity and enormously increased wealth have gone hand in hand with shorter hours and higher wages,” Mr Hobbs said. “ English records show that 100 years ago girls often worked in factories in busy times from 3 a.in. to 10 p.m. for 3s a week, and children between 7 and 14 years of age worked from G a.m. to 7 p.m. In America the working hours wore 60 a week in 1880, and came down to 44 in 1928. There are many in this Dominion who will remember when 10 hours a day were the regular working hours. Has the Dominion suffered by the reduction to 44 hours a week ? No, the conditions here before the slump are again a striking example that the facts defeat the arguments. What those who use the apparently sound arguments fail to realise is that the ever-advanc-ing machine, with its cheapening processes, is the fairy that wafts them out of court.

EFFECT ON COSTS. “ Many people may have the idea that it will add 10 per cent, to the sale price of goods, but this is very far from being the case. Wages costs are only a portion of what makes up the sale price. For instance, the. Year Book shows that the wages paid by the whole of the Dominion’s factories only average 18 per cent, of the value of the output; a 10 per cent, increase on this would add less than 2 per cent, to the value of the finished goods. A retailer in a large way tells me that his wages cost is 9J per cent, of his sales, so in that case a 10 per cent, increased wage cost would only add 1 per cent, to the sale price. In wholesale warehouses the wage cost might not be 2 per cent, of turnover. In industries where much handwork is done the labour cost might be as high as 33 1-3 per cent., .but 10 per cent, on that only adds 3 1-8 per cent, to sales price. A cumulative process applies more or less in most lines locally manufactured. In the case of imported goods, however, there would only be the sales labour cost of 10 per cent., or if bought through a warehouse 12 per cent., and one-tenth of this would add only H per cent, to sales price."

. RECENT INCREASES. Mr Hobbs mentioned the raising of the exchange rate in 1933 and the sales tax as recent increases in costs, from which a considerable increase in the cost of living would naturally be expected. But the official figures showed that in February, 1933, the cost of living index was 797, and in February, 1935, the cost of living index was 820, an increase too small to be worth consideration, and which in any case was probably due to the recovery of prices from the depths of the slump. It was true that without this increase in exchange and taxation, living costs might have fallen more, but the fact remained that in spite of these big imposts they did not appreciably increase. “ A 10 per cent, hours reduction will not of itself give 10 per cent, employment because many firms could carry on without an increase of staff, but if with new industries, the extension of priesent industries, and a reduction in working hours we could increase employment by 10 per cent, it would mean the absorption of 30,000 out of the 42,000 registered unemployed to-dayj 'caving a balance of 12.000 who should be naturally employed as prosperity returns.”