The Grey River Argus MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1948. MORE HUMANE INUSTRIAL POLICY

Grey River Argus, 9 August 1948, Page 4

The Grey River Argus MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1948. MORE HUMANE INUSTRIAL POLICY

Jn spite of predictions last century that the worker’s lot would worsen so as to prompt revolution, a self-adjusting tendency has seen a contrary development, An advance in consideration for the physical health of wage-earners lias been this century followed by a real advance in the general level of consideration for factors affecting the workers’ psychological tv elf are rendering more humane their relationship to industry. Mass production indeed prompted fears that the masses would be turned into mere machine tenders, especially offer the example of the American development, but that phase is passing. Industry certainly becomes more highly organised, but this now process demonstrates clearly how interest and co-operation in production demands that conditions shall be such as to afford the worker satisfaction and a sense of self-ful-filment. There still arc indeed too many employers whose attitude is primitive, but the majority are prone to accept new ideas, which are being exemplified in better planned factories. Shortage of labour might spur the backward employer in this direction, but the industrial practice now known as personnel management is extending because the results are good in production. Strangely the main factor in this change has been less the thinking of industrialists than the application to industrial problems of conclusions reached in the fields of social science and psychology by academic thinking. It is those industrialists who have been responsible to intellectual movements who have paved the way for progress. They have long ago seen that a fuller understanding of human motives and behaviour could be brought to bear upon relationships with the workers. The pay rate, recruitment and the sack are a very narrow category within which to cramp the workers. It may be said that a great many of the larger industrial units will soon be found to employ personnel managers equally with other specialists. Some of the functions of these personnel managers are those, of job classification, staff selection, and placement, staff training, industrial welfare, and the interpretation and application of industrial awards. It is now realised that the only basis on which human beings will co-operate with one another in the constantly enlarging groups in industry is that of a reasonable equity of treatment as between individuals. The claims of candidates for jobs and promotion are to-day coming to be judged more impartially, and rates of pay for different kinds of work are being consistently related to each other, while desputes are being settled on logical and humane principles.

The factor of greater importance in the new process of ' personnel management is a gradual alteration in the whole approach by industry to the personal problem. The idea is that the work of an employee is the product of his whole personality. It therefore pays to give the worker conditions in which his whole make up is taken into account. Good equipment, pay, and conditions are not enough, it is now seen that, while economic compulsion will not ensure it, the essential thing is a willing and creative participation by the worker in the complex functions of modern industry. There must be for the employee a real share in the formation of policy, so far as it touches his work. Words cut no ice, but what does cut ice is a willingness to afford the worker a much more liberal participation in industrial profits in the form of healthful and pleasant working conditions. Production committees, work councils, welfare committee, with employee and trade union representation on boards, committees and governing bodies, are trend of the time. Where the workers share in planning, the idea of servitude is eliminated. The day of the crudely assertive executive is passing. No little of the unrest which industry has exhibited has been a natural reaction on the part of self-respecting workers to the personal pride of executives lacking in understanding. Freedom

and consent have to enter more largely into the relation of labour and capital because the workers are required to undertake more complex functions. At the same time, workers must recogenise their new responsibilities. Finally it appears that in those industrial directions where personnel policy is left to look after itself, and legalistic action instead is relied on, the problems remain the greatest.