Shop Management

74 SHOP MANAGEMENT this amount will surely result in his being laid off. It must be remembered that on plain piece work the less competent workmen will always bring what influence and pressure they can to cause the best men to slow down towards their level and that the task idea is needed to counteract this influence. Where the labor market is large enough to secure in a reasonable time enough strictly first-class men, the piece work rates should be fixed on such a basis that only a first-class man working at his best can earn the average amount called for. This figure should be, in the case of first-class men as stated above, from 30 per cent, to 100 per cent, beyond the wages usually paid. The task idea is emphasized with this style of piece work by two things — the high wages and the laying off, after a reasonable trial, of incom- petent men; and for the success of the system, the number of men employed on practically the same class of work should be large enough for the work- men quite often to have the object lesson of seeing men laid off for failing to earn high wages and others substituted in their places. There are comparatively few machine shops, or even manufacturing establishments, in which the work is so uniform in its nature as to employ enough men on the same grade of work and in sufficiently close contact to one another to render piece work preferable to the other systems. In the great ma- jority of cases the work is so miscellaneous in its nature as to call for the employment of workmen varying greatly in their natural ability and attain- ments, all the way, for instance, from the ordinary