Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

CHAPTER XV SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND TRADES UNIONS One of the most definite and most often repeated aims of the new management is to obtain the complete good-will and co-operation of the workers. English readers will infer that their programme should include the winning over of the Trade Unions to a belief in the new schemes, unless these schemes are to be started only in industries where Unions are weak or non-existent. Such a limitation would rule out the most important industries, and the majority of capable and thoughtful workers. Readers will be fully aware, however, that the situation created by the war has brought into our important industries a large amount of unorganized labour; semi-skilled and unskilled men’s labour, and female labour, which has had little or no oppor- tunity to organize. It may have occurred to readers already that the repetition jobs which form a large part of munition work would lend themselves very readily to time-study and the rest of the programme of scientific management. This fact is of great importance if we are trying to look beyond the war ; because there is no doubt that employers who have invested largely in the automatic and semi- 159