Shop Management

SHOP MANAGEMENT 35 having worked harder and increased his output, he is likely to entirely lose sight of his employer’s side of the case and to become imbued with a grim determi- nation to have no more cuts if soldiering can prevent it. Unfortunately for the character of the workman, soldiering involves a deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive his employer, and thus upright and straight-forward workmen are compelled to become more or less hypocritical. The employer is soon looked upon as an antagonist, if not as an enemy, and the mutual confidence which should exist be- tween a leader and his men, the enthusiasm, the feeling that they are all working for the same end and will share in the results, is entirely lacking. The feeling of antagonism under the ordinary piece- work system becomes in many cases so marked on the part of the men that any proposition made by their employers, however reasonable, is looked upon with suspicion. Soldiering becomes such a fixed habit that men will frequently take pains to restrict the product of machines which they are running when even a large increase in output would involve no more work on their part. On work which is repeated over and over again and the volume of which is sufficient to permit it, the plan of making a contract with a competent work- man to do a certain class of work and allowing him to employ his own men subject to strict limitations, is successful. As a rule, the fewer the men employed by the con- tractor and the smaller the variety of the work, the greater will be the success under the contract system,