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CHAPTER V
How We Can Do It
Why not a National Survey Board to cover the whole range of possible employment, pensions, and working hours?
SHORTER working week would make a substantial contribution towards solving the problem of casual labour in the docks industry.
Why should the great shipping interests be allowed to continue the practice of keeping men on call with no liability upon themselves, apart from the Unemployment Insurance contribution?
I have been fighting for over twenty years to establish a guaranteed number of working days per week as a definite liability on the industry. It would cost approximately 6d. per ton on goods entering and leaving the country, and before the introduction of tariffs I was informed that it was impossible for merchandise to carry this additional charge.
Yet tariffs have now been imposed and goods are now bearing the charge for revenue purposes, and the same people hail it as having given a great national impetus to the trade and industry of the country.
Turning to wages, I am satisfied that a 40-hour working week can be introduced without any reductions in wages. Evidence to justify this claim can be found in connection with the introduction of the 9-hour day, and, later, the 8-hour day. This apart, however, it is indisputable that the workers cannot stand any further cuts; they are down to the bone.
It should also be fully understood that any wage cuts introduced to meet the cost of a 40-hour week would simply defeat the object; the purchasing power of the workers would be correspondingly reduced, with the result that we should soon be back in exactly the same position.
Given the will and an honest and sincere lead from the British Government instead of the negative attitude adopted at Geneva, I am satisfied that a 40-hour week on the basis of existing wages can be established without any serious difficulty.
I appreciate that adjustments may have to be made in certain piece-work conditions, and in other minor ways, but I unhesitatingly assert that the main principle can be established. It is all a question of will.
The effect on industry would be tremendous. It is obvious that the regularisation of employment would bring new services into being. The abolition of overtime, the regularisation of hours, and the maintenance of the standard of living, would give a better equated income all over the country. It would save an enormous amount in unemployment benefit. It represents the most direct road to the reduction in taxation for which our opponents are asking.
Finally, it would immediately stimulate other forms of leisure services, because it has to be remembered that the so-called luxuries of to-day often become the necessities of the next generation, and generally lead to a new adaptation of industry very speedily.
There is no question as to our ability to carry out these proposals. It is, I repeat, all a question of will. If we will it, it can be done. Let us substitute can for can't, and stress it throughout the country! It can be done!
How shall we give effect to these proposals? In my view Parliament should set up a National Employment Board to survey the whole range of possible employment, pensions, working hours, and the limits of the employable population, and should give the Board the definite task of grappling with these problems.
The Board, having cleared the decks under the headings mentioned, should advise the Government as to the proportion of the employable population private industry can absorb and the proportion for whom the State must find employment.
In my opinion, the basis of employment, allowing for holidays, should be the provision of work for 48 weeks in the year at round about a 40-hour week. Future income calculations should not be purely on an hourly or daily basis; we should have regard to the essential income over the whole year.
One thing to guard against is long-drawn-out deliberations. When the May Committee was set up to deal with finance it acted with great promptitude, and I suggest that, if the same will operates, these problems can be tackled with equal promptitude. A very large part of the programme I have outlined could, I suggest, be dealt with under four months, provided the task is given to a small body, but, if it is necessary to wait until agreement is reached with all the interests involved, then we shall never succeed.
The Board should report to the Government, who should have power to give effect to its decisions within the limits prescribed by Parliament.
We want no more Royal Commissions or Committees or anything of that character. It is action that is needed, and needed speedily.
If the scheme I have proposed were adopted the problem of over 2,000,000 of our unemployed would be solved, while the creation of new industry in consequence of the changes involved would absorb a very large block of the remainder. The effect would be to create a demand for consumable goods, stimulating the whole internal trade of the country.
The regularisation of employment would give us a better opportunity of establishing a system of organised holidays, with pay, and other measures necessary for the physical and moral well-being of the community. The wealth of the country would increase and taxation would decline.
I do not claim for my proposals that they provide a final solution of our troubles, for that can only be provided by the reorganisation of society on the basis of public ownership, but I do claim that, if they are put into operation quickly and without any serious disturbance, they will ease the suffering of a large section of the community and remove some of the worst evils of the present system. Further, there is this to be said for the proposals: (a) they do not unbalance the Budget; (b) they go a long way toward balancing the Unemployment Fund; and (c) they would greatly reduce the torture of the Means Test.
Prosperity may come without these proposals being adopted, but it will be the prosperity of the financiers and captains of industry. Such prosperity will leave a tremendous portion of the population still rotting and dying in despair.
To all people of good-will, to whom the queues outside the Labour Exchanges have become (as they have to me) a veritable nightmare, I say, Join IN A TREMENDOUS EFFORT to get these proposals carried into Law immediately! Let me hear from you!