Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

TRADES UNIONS 179 it is the reverse, some people are being unjustly penalized. Then the effect of time-study may be to improve certain processes greatly, and the bonus system may produce a great difference in the operator’s wages. Other processes may be altered hardly at all, and there is little chance of financial benefit. Mr. Sanford Thompson (in “ Concrete Costs ”), and Mr. Emerson, see that this difficulty can be met properly only by adjusting the percentage of bonus so that the reward to the workman for his col- laborating is not dependent on the increase of out- put. Here we have a very strong reason for allowing the workers to discuss the percentage of bonus, in order that their sense of social justice for all the workers of their class shall be satisfied. It is in speaking of class, and of a class-rate, that another of the Unionists’ objections will become apparent. The new management’must entail some re-classification of labour, even if the process is gradual. The members of an Industrial Union probably would not object to this as much as those of a Craft Union would. But the latter have in the past found classification on their own method difficult enough, and they know only too well that in these days the whole classification of labour is in a state of flux to which scientific management can add but a little more instability. Here, as every- where else, mutual discussion is the only way of promoting understanding and agreement. With regard to remuneration, British workmen