Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

THE FOREMEN 59 status of the worker. There is no doubt that the advocates of functional management count on foremen’s places being filled for the most part by the skilled workmen of the shops. In fact, they find here the chief use for skilled employés, in cases where semi-skilled workers can actually tend the machines, under direction and training. This is indeed in accordance with their general aim of using the skilled man exclusively for skilled work as far as possible. According to Taylor’s central idea different qualifications are demanded from different men, but he has really added a new attribute to each —he makes a special demand for the man who can teach and show others rather than for the man who can drive them. Then stress is laid by more recent writers on management on the advantages of having fortnightly meetings of the various foremen, so as to discuss present activities and possible improvements. Fore- men’s meetings are occasionally the custom in works where the foremen are of the old type ; but where the idea of functional foremen has been developed, opportunity for mutual discussion will be even more valuable. It has frequently to be pointed out in describing the new management that its advocates urge constantly the value of genuine co-operation between employer and employed. Trades Unions should give special attention to the attitude taken by the employer to the new type of foremen, remembering from the first that a larger number of overseers of the kind, in proportion to the rest of the workers, will be required.