DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Fantods, whole no. 9, Winter 1945

Transcribe
Translate

Fantods, whole no. 9, Winter 1945

Page 18

page 18     EFTY-NINE

An interesting commentary on the fruits of enlightened employer-employee relations may be found in the case of Jack and Heintz (see Mill & Factory, Feb. 1943). Their employees, or "associates" as they prefer to have it, are paid high wages for working under a system which includes, among a fantastic number of other advantages, such things as an absence of production pressure. An associate takes a break whenever he wishes during the working day. Veteran employees have been given vacation trips with expenses paid. All get free lunches, work shoes and medical care. Engaged in war work, the associates put in a 12-hour day, seven days a week (which they, themselves, voted in),and appear to like it, as evidenced by high morale and lack of an absenteeism problem. This company manages to do these things while paying a good basic wage plus overtime on more than half their man-hours. And what happens to them? Oh, they were investigated by the House Military Affairs Committee a year or so back onaccounta they were making such a terrific profit and giving fabulous bonuses to the associates. An exceptional case, perhaps, but an instructive one when we further note that this concern, which is a "small business", has little labor turnover. Probably another reason for their success lies in the fact that most of their labor is highly skilled. It is a truism that unskilled labor is the most costly of any.
Of course industry requires regulation. Intelligent supporters of capitalism with whom I've talked seem to agree with this. The rub is to get regulation which will encourage enlightened business-labor-consumer relations and yet avoid the favoring of inefficient enterprises. With our system of politics and pressure groups that is not an easy thing to do.

NUCLEUS: moves us to continue on in the same vein. I tend to favor Lynn Bridges' point of view summat because he has been thru the mill and, being an intelligent person, can undoubtedly draw conclusions from his own experiences and not be obliged to get them predigested from the Kept Press on one hand nor from the leftist sheets on the other. And while no doubt the latter don't have as many axes to grind as do the former, still one suspects they fall considerably short of objectivity. Whatever I read about the Philly strike has long since left my memory - whatever it was didn't alter my views a whit either way. Now I can only observe the notion of a company's sponsoring a strike against itself seems most fantastic. The Murray-Kilgore bill is another thing that I shamefully confess is hopelessly hazy to me now. I listened to a lot of debate on it at the time but don't seem to have achieved any lasting conviction from either the pros or cons. There is this point, though. The idea behind the wonderful bill is to raise the working man's living standard. The merit of this is undebatable, but the question is whether this is accomplished simply by forcing up the wage scale. Remember that in so doing you increase not only manufacturing costs but also consumer demand. If prices in general go up along with wages we have gainednothing and are simply heading inflationward. In wartime this is disastrous, since wartime economy is of necessity a scarcity economy. In peacetime we can potentially absorb any increase in consumers' demand, but even then the inertia of the system is such that a sudden increase in the wage level still tends to depress the purchasing power of the currency standard and thus offset in large measure the desired improvement in the living standard.
Maybe industrialists do obstruct technological advancement. I dunno, but I do know that the examples you cite are more than mildly absurd. Look, do you know television can be broadcast only over a circle of line-of-sight

Saving...

page 18 EFTY-NINE An interesting commentary on the fruits of enlightened employer-employee relations may be found in the case of Jack and Heintz (see Mill & Factory, Feb. 1943). Their employees, or "associates" as they prefer to have it, are paid high wages for working under a system which includes, among a fantastic number of other advantages, such things as an absence of production pressure. An associate takes a break whenever he wishes during the working day. Veteran employees have been given vacation trips with expenses paid. All get free lunches, work shoes and medical care. Engaged in war work, the associates put in a 12-hour day, seven days a week (which they, themselves, voted in),and appear to like it, as evidenced by high morale and lack of an absenteeism problem. This company manages to do these things while paying a good basic wage plus overtime on more than half their man-hours. And what happens to them? Oh, they were investigated by the House Military Affairs Committee a year or so back onaccounta they were making such a terrific profit and giving fabulous bonuses to the associates. An exceptional case, perhaps, but an instructive one when we further note that this concern, which is a "small business", has little labor turnover. Probably another reason for their success lies in the fact that most of their labor is highly skilled. It is a truism that unskilled labor is the most costly of any. Of course industry requires regulation. Intelligent supporters of capitalism with whom I've talked seem to agree with this. The rub is to get regulation which will encourage enlightened business-labor-consumer relations and yet avoid the favoring of inefficient enterprises. With our system of politics and pressure groups that is not an easy thing to do. NUCLEUS: moves us to continue on in the same vein. I tend to favor Lynn Bridges' point of view summat because he has been thru the mill and, being an intelligent person, can undoubtedly draw conclusions from his own experiences and not be obliged to get them predigested from the Kept Press on one hand nor from the leftist sheets on the other. And while no doubt the latter don't have as many axes to grind as do the former, still one suspects they fall considerably short of objectivity. Whatever I read about the Philly strike has long since left my memory - whatever it was didn't alter my views a whit either way. Now I can only observe the notion of a company's sponsoring a strike against itself seems most fantastic. The Murray-Kilgore bill is another thing that I shamefully confess is hopelessly hazy to me now. I listened to a lot of debate on it at the time but don't seem to have achieved any lasting conviction from either the pros or cons. There is this point, though. The idea behind the wonderful bill is to raise the working man's living standard. The merit of this is undebatable, but the question is whether this is accomplished simply by forcing up the wage scale. Remember that in so doing you increase not only manufacturing costs but also consumer demand. If prices in general go up along with wages we have gainednothing and are simply heading inflationward. In wartime this is disastrous, since wartime economy is of necessity a scarcity economy. In peacetime we can potentially absorb any increase in consumers' demand, but even then the inertia of the system is such that a sudden increase in the wage level still tends to depress the purchasing power of the currency standard and thus offset in large measure the desired improvement in the living standard. Maybe industrialists do obstruct technological advancement. I dunno, but I do know that the examples you cite are more than mildly absurd. Look, do you know television can be broadcast only over a circle of line-of-sight