All of these incentives arise because the man feels that his
sense of justice is being considered; that if the task is properly
laid out, and the price per piece is properly determined, he is
given a "square deal" in being allowed to accomplish as great an
amount of work as he can, with the assurance that his reward will be
promptly coming to him.
DANGER OF RATE BEING CUT.--Piece work becomes objectionable only
when the rate is cut. The moment the rate is cut the first time, the
man begins to wonder whether it is going to be cut again, and his
attention is distracted from the work by his debating this question
constantly. At best, his attention wanders from one subject to the
other, and back again. It cannot be concentrated on his work. After
the rate has been cut once or twice,--and it is sure to be cut
unless it has been set from scientifically derived elementary time
units,--the man loses his entire confidence in the stability of the
rate, and, naturally, when he loses this confidence, his work is
done more slowly, due to lack of further enthusiasm. On the
contrary, as long as it is to his advantage to do the work and he is
sure that his reward will be prompt, and that he will always get the
price that has been determined as right by him and by the employers
for his work, he can do this work easily in the time set. As soon as
he feels that he will not get it, he will naturally begin to do
less, as it will be not only to his personal advantage to do as
little as possible, but also very much to the advantage of his
fellows, for whom the rate will also be cut.
TASK WAGE CONTAINS NO INCENTIVE TO ADDITIONAL WORK.--What
Schloss calls the Task Wage would, as he well says, be the
intermediate between time or day wage and piece wage; that is, it
would be the assigning of a definite amount of work to be done in
definite time, and to be paid for by a definite sum. If the task
were set scientifically, and the time scientifically determined, as
it must naturally be for a scientific task, and the wage adequate
for that work, there would seem to be nothing about this form of
remuneration which could be a cause of dissatisfaction to the
worker. Naturally, however, there would be absolutely no chance for
him to desire to go any faster than the time set, or to accomplish
any more work in the time set than that which he was obliged to, in
that he could not possibly get anything for the extra work done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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