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Importance of a good working environment
To deal in an orderly way with people available for work essential to the war effort, we have made an Essential Work Order which safeguards the labor force in these undertakings. By this means we are able to do certain things. For instance:
It gives the workers a right to a guaranteed minimum weekly wage to ensure that they are not suspended for short periods without wages.
It lays down that any undertaking that is registered must have proper welfare amenities, such as for feeding, nursing, medical attention, etc., in the works; and outside the works, provision is made for entertainment, recreation and housing accommodation for the people transferred from their homes.
It takes away the right of an employer to discharge a worker and the right of a worker to leave his employment, without giving a week’s notice and also without obtaining the permission of the National Service Officer, but workers and employers can appeal to an independent board against the National Service Officer's decision.
The underlying principle in this Order is that if you take away the right of a worker to use his labor in a free market and, in the interests of the war effort, powers are used to make him "stay put" and produce at the factory or works where the State thinks he is essential, then the State must enter into an obligation to the worker and see to it that he has security.
It has other advantages—it gives to the Government an intimate knowledge of how many people are wanted for each industry; makes transference within an industry easy and prevents an enormous waste of man power in the turnover of labor. It is of great assistance to managements; when they get the time and flow of material their output is not interrupted by constant changes in personnel, so the rhythm of production is substantially increased.
Experience during the short time the Order has been working has demonstrated clearly that, while industry has to carry additional liabilities, the improvement in organization and management that has rapidly come about is, in fact, reducing costs.
A factor that is becoming apparent is that you get better discipline and loyalty with fear of dismissal removed than you do by the threat of it.
Some people have said, in effect, to the State: "You must keep your hands off industry; it is not your business. We, the industrialists, are the people who know how to manage business." I suggest that no institution can claim the right to perpetuation unless it can survive and serve the State in the most acute crises. That is the great test to apply. I make that statement generally and do not apply it to one side more than another. Immediately a crisis comes, what do some great industrialists do? They run to the civil servant —the very man who is condemned by the great industrialists; they go to the man to whom they have denied the correct training because they say it is not the State's business. They ask the great State Departments. They deny the State the right to interfere in industry in peace time and say that it is the prerogative of the management. Surely that has been the claim made for a long time, and that has been the opposition set up to my political philosophy. Immediately the State gets into war or in a situation of that character, then, in order to meet the crisis, they have to call upon State institutions to bring them together, to organize and to take control, and they have to put men in charge to whom they have denied the right training in peace time to cope with the situation.
I did not, in making that statement, intend to be controversial. I have stated a fact.
Let me turn to the question of the turnover of labor. Some people say that industry relies upon the power of dismissal to maintain discipline. What does that mean? It means that there is an economic drive on the workman to work, the ability to force your will on another by the imposition of starvation, which induces fear and resentment in the other man’s mind. By relying on that, you do not get the right kind of discipline. Recently I met a whole group of shipbuilders—and what was their cry? They said, "You, the Minister of Labor, must undertake discipline." I said, "Why?" They replied, "We cannot." I said, "Why can’t you?" They replied, "Because sacking is no good." That means that the basic condition upon which a system is run has been starvation or the ability to make another citizen unemployed.
The other day I appealed to, or directed, or whatever you like to call it, everybody who has been engaged in shipbuilding to register. In the first few days there were registered 49,000 persons, who had left or been driven out of that industry in the last fifteen years. Happily, most of those men, after three or four years’ unemployment, had found new jobs; some of them, I am glad to say, good jobs, secure jobs. Some are in business. I now have to take those men out of those secure jobs to go back to the shipyards. There were men from insurance companies, men employed by a university, and in all kinds of capacities, many of them in secure jobs and some with pension rights. I have to put them back into this industry, where they will help the nation. Some are going back with $10, $15, or $25 a week less than they are now getting in their permanent jobs. They have already responded and are going back to help the nation.
We have a grave responsibility, in the struggle and crisis through which we are going now, because of the policy which we allowed to be followed for fifteen years, in driving the best skilled men out of the industry and, what was worse, driving out the facilities as well. People say to the Minister of Labor, "Make that position good in nine months," when the facilities are not there and the men have been driven into other employment. It cannot be done all at once.
I have tried to get over the position by carrying the men with me. I know the British workman. When you meet in conference two parties who have been opponents in their economic struggle, up to the war and after the outbreak of war, it is very difficult to overcome the feelings that exist. A little conciliation sometimes wins your way, in those circumstances, better than a big stick.
I am told that I ought not to make these appeals, and not to persuade people, but to order them. Every decent manager knows that if you overdo the ordering business, you get a reaction and disaster; that is not the way to get output. Therefore, I decided to interpret these Orders in a perfectly reasonable manner.