Workers and Employers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 53, 28 June 1940, Page 10

Workers and Employers

S one who has had both business and military experience, as well as that of a trade union official. I realise how utterly different and on the

whole inferior, is the personal relation between employers and workers in industry compared with that between officers and men in war, It is a depressing thought that man after thousands of years of evolution has learned to co-operate willingly for war and for nothing else, but perhaps the position is not quite as bad as it seems. Men co-operate in war because they

ate consciously working to a common end — the defeat of the enemy and because, in general, all take similar risks and share similar hardships. They do not at present co-operate with the same enthusiasm in industry because the workers as a rule do not feel the same interest in the success of the enterprise as the employer. If they shared the responsibility and if they could be assured that when they worked harder and produced more, they would benefit, the workers would probably give all the co-operation desired. — (W. N. Pharazyn, "Industrial Relations-A New Zealand Research," 2YA, June 10).