THE CLYDE LOOK-OUT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5119, 20 August 1877, Page 3

THE CLYDE LOOK-OUT.

(From the Glasgow News, May . 21.) The lock-out in the Clyde shipbuilding trade is fast resolving itself into a question of time payments versus piece and contract work. In consequence of the prevalence of piece-work, the lock-out will not affect more than onefourth of the workmen who would otherwise

be thrown out. This fact will probably lead employers to consider whether, for the sake of future peace, the present struggle should 1 not embrace the principle on which labor is remunerated. Taking the entire district of the Clyde, there are nearly 50,000 hands employed in one way or another in our ship yards. Of these, however, somewhere about 40,000 are artisans on piece-work, or small contractors employing laborers ; so that the lock-out which commences to-day will not affect more than 10.000 bands. All these are paid by time. The industrious and the lazy are on the same level, a false system that necessarily involves the misuse of a trade union to bolster it up. If the lock-out should result in the extension of the principle of payment by results, or- the contract system —-as it is tolerably certain to do in a greater or less degree—it will accomplish a very desirable work. Skilful artisans would make additional profits, and there would be a fair prospect of greater harmony between capital and labor. Sudden and arbitrary demands for increased payments by time, such as that made by the shipwrights, are the most disturbing elements in trade, especially in those branches of industry where large contracts, extending over long periods of time, are the rule. As an illustration, take the case of the 10,000 men locked

out. If employers, forming their estimates on the basis of present wages, could obtain contracts which would fully occupy these 10,000 men for twelve months, and if an advance of a penny an hour were insisted upon and obtained by the workmen, the increase on the estimated cost would be £IOB,OOO, all of which would be a. dead loss to the contractors. . No wonder employers hesitate to grant an increase which involves so serious a penalty. The plea of the trade unions naturally is that the “ state of trade ” —meaning the prosperity of their branch of it—justifies- the demand. But with far more reason the employers x-eply that the price at which they have obtained the contract does not afford an increase. The contract and piece systems, if they do not absolutely prevent, at any rate minimise the possible disagreement. By the one the employer lets out a given section of work to be finished at a certain price. The workman contracting to do it becomes himself

an employer on a small scale, and by this principle, instead of a rigid line of demarcation between capital and labor, there is a blending of interests and a scope for enterprise by which the laborer may develop into a capitalist. The piece system is but a continuation of the same principle of payment by results adapted to descriptions of work which cannot be contracted for. It is, happily, unnecessary to give reasons why piece-work should be the rule, and payments by time the exception. Nothing is needed now but opportunities for extending the application of the principle, and the chance which is about presenting itself in the Clyde shipbuilding trade should not be let pass. Employers will probably manage to carry on work with the staffs of men unaffected by the lock-out; defections are sure to follow from the others; and it is not at all improbable that by this time next year the payment of wages based upon the rate of so much per hour will be wholly confined to the lowest and unskilled classes of workmen in Clyde shipbuilding yards.