Further to the despicable and revolting travesty of "employment policy analysis" by T. Boeri, R. Layard and S. Nickell in their Welfare to Work report to Prime Ministers Blair and D'Alema and the Council of Europe, I am forwarding three texts. The first is the central argument of the 1901 London Times series, The Crisis in British Industry, allegedly co-authored by William Collison, debonair scoundrel and publicist for the "National Free Labour Association", an organization whose main purpose was to supply scab labour for the strike-breaking but whose secondary role was to pose as a phony "Labour" political party, presumably to confuse working class voters and split the labour vote. I believe they actually ran candidates in an election around 1911. The second is the "lumpy bit" from the Boeri, Layard, Nickell (the latter two from the London School of Economics) report to the Council of Europe at http://www.palazzochigi.it/esteri/lisbona/dalema_blair/inglese.html Please note that the paragraphs presented here were emphasized by bold text in the report. The third text is a letter to the editor of the London Times, from Sidney and Beatrice Webb, responding to the Crisis in British Industry series. It should be remembered that the Webbs had considerable to do with the founding of the British Labour Party as well as the establishment of the London School of Economics. Sidney also co-authored a book in the 1890s on the economics of the eight-hour day. Beatrice was a prominant dissenting member of a Royal Commission on Unemployment, whose minority report was influential in establishing the social insurance benefits that the Boeri, Layard, Nickell report is bent on dismantling. 1. The Collison/Pratt hypothesis about the motive behind the movement for an eight-hour day (from "The Crisis in British Industry, London Times, November 28, 1901: It was hoped to "absorb" all the unemployed in course of time, not by the laudable and much-to-be-desired means of increasing the volume of trade, and hence, also, the amount of work to be done, but simply by obtaining employment for a larger number of persons on such work as there was already. The motive of this aspiration, however, was not one of philanthropy pure and simple. When all the unemployed had been absorbed the workers would have the employers entirely at their mercy, and would be able to command such wages and such terms as they might think fit. The general adoption of the eight hours system was to bring in a certain proportion of the unemployed; if there were still too many left the eight hours system was to be followed by a six hours system; while if, within the six, or eight, or any other term of hours, every one took things easy and did as little work as he conveniently could, still more openings would be found for the remaining unemployed, and still better would be the chances for the Socialist propaganda. 2. From the Report to Prime Ministers Blair and D’Alema, WELFARE-TO-WORK AND THE FIGHT AGAINST LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT, by T. Boeri, R. Layard and S. Nickell: The welfare-to-work approach outlined above is incompatible with the view that full employment can be achieved only by reducing the number of persons in the labour market. Yet many people doubt whether society can actually provide jobs for more people. According to this popular wisdom (the so-called "lump-of-labour" fallacy), the number of jobs is fixed. Hence unemployment can only be reduced by redistributing the stock of jobs available across individuals and pushing people out of the labour force. This widespread belief lies at the root of the campaign for earlier retirement, and explains much of the pessimism about welfare-to-work policies for the unemployed. We discuss these issues at some length in our report. In the very short-run there is of course a limit to the number of jobs, which is set by the level of aggregate demand. But aggregate demand in Europe is rising and will continue to do so until it hits its long-run upper limit. This limit is set not by demand but by the effective supply of employable labour. And if the supply of labour rises the number of jobs responds. If history tells any lesson, it is that. 3. The Webb's reply to THE CRISIS IN BRITISH INDUSTRY: December 6, 1901 TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. Sir, In the articles which you have lately published attacking trade unionism you expressly challenge reply, and you even infer that the absence of contradiction in your columns proves, not only the correctness of the allegations themselves, but also the validity of the deductions made from them. We venture therefore, to say that six years' detailed investigation into the actual working of trade unionism all over Great Britain convinced us that, as an institution, it has a good and (to those who will take the trouble to study the facts) a conclusive answer to your charges. But working men do not read The Times, any more than your Correspondent reads our Industrial Democracy, in which he would have found all his charges against trade unionism examined in full and minutre detail, and, we hope, with candour, four years ago. This elaborate work has not been refuted or replied to. The absence from your columns of any answer to your Correspondent's allegations is therefore no proof of their truth. What your Correspondent alleges comes, in brief, to this -- that English workmen do not put their full strength into their work; that they give when they can a "light stroke," or skulk; that they are not eager for the greatest possible productivity, and even resent it, as tending to diminish employment; that they resist labour-saving contrivances; and that they are in a constant conspiracy to keep down the speed and energy of their labour. Now, so far as they relate to the instinctive sentiment of a manual working class, employed at time wages, we believe that your Correspondent's charges contain much truth. It is a special evil of the separation of industrial classes, the reduction of all relations between employer and employed to the "cash nexus," and the growing intensity of competition, that masters and men are always tempted to try to take advantage of one another. The employers seek to get more work for the same wages, or otherwise to alter the proportion of remuneration to effort, and the workmen seek to effect a similar alteration in the other direction -- namely, by getting more wages for the same work, or expending less energy for the same remuneration. The result in either case is bad for the community, and it is to be unreservedly deplored that conditions so vital to national well-being as the citizen's standard of life and industrial productivity should be left to this anarchic duel between individuals. But your Correspondent also alleges that the evil (he characteristically thinks only of the workman's malpractices) is worse than formerly, and that it is increasing; and he identifies it with trade unionism, which he accuses of being the cause of what he dislikes. We believe, after considerable investigation, that these statements are quite incorrect and the reverse of the truth. The complaints as to diminished quantity or energy of work, and of the tacit conspiracy to discourage individual exertion, occur with curiously exact iteration in every decade of the last 100 years at least. Even in the 16th century there were found those who, in the words of Orlando in *As You Like It*, sighed for -- "The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed." But such complaints are evidence only of the psychological condition of their utterers -- they prove no objective fact. To give one instance only, we have found exactly the same accusation of the bricklayers' limiting the number of bricks, and precisely the same belief that they were only doing "half as much" as they did 20 years before, in the great strikes of 1833, in those of 1853, again in 1859-60, and again in 1871. We believe them all -- that is to say, we take them as some evidence that the employers felt the workmen's constant attempt in all ages to alter the bargain to their own presumed advantage. But we have found absolutely notheing that can be called evidence that the actual *quantum* of work done per hour, quality and conditions being taken into account, is less today than it was a hundred years ago. (It must be remembered that brickwork differs enormously, and that some that passed muster in old days would not now be allowed by the architect or district surveyor.) We must add that we entirely disbelieve in the existence of any unwritten limit of 400, or any other number, of bricks per day as a consciously agreed-upon limit. This is another old story, for which, after much investigation, we have never been able to find any evidence. Passing from the bricklayers to the whole range of English labour, we can only record as the result of our own studies that, so far from the aggregate product being less per head, and decreasing, we are convinced, on the evidence of employers themselves, that greater sobriety, greater regularity, increased intelligence, and improved methods of remuneration make the manual labour of this country (irrespective of the results of machinery) far more productive to-day than it ever was before. Would any great employer exchange his present workers for those of 1801? Moreover, in so far as the disposition to limit the amount of energy exists, it is incorrect to ascribe it to trade unionism. Only 5 per cent. of the population are trade unionists, and many of the most important occupations are free from trade unionism. Do we find that the manual worker is there exempt from his typical economy of energy or resentment of labour-saving appliances? Is the agricultural labourer, for instance, a worker at high pressure, a keenly alert enthusiast for high productivity, or free from the "lump of labour" fallacy? On the other hand, there is certainly no keener advocate of "speeding up," no more eager user of the newest machinery, than the Lancashire cotton spinners, who form, perhaps, the most completely organized and powerful of trade unions. It is clearly not possible to decide whether trade unionism is or is not a cause of so widely prevalent a characteristic of the manual worker without a fairly complete comparison of trade with trade, whcihc your Correspondent does not attempt. Again, we can only give our own conclusion for what it may be worth, formed after such a comparison. This is that trade unionism is certainly not the cause, or even a cause, of what is an instinctive attitude of the hired manual worker as such; that, whilst trade unionism (as a working-class movement) has naturally at no time been uninfected by this characteristic, it has during the past 100 years been steadily shaking it off; and that at the present time the influence of trade unionism, considered as a whole, is more efficacious in increasing than in reducing the productivity of the labour of its members. Take, for instance, the question of piecework. No one would gather from your Correspondent -- no doubt, he is unaware of it -- that (omitting the general labourers and transport workers, where piecework is plainly impossible) more than half the membership of trade unionism positively insists on piecework., and would instantly strike if an employer tried to pay by the hour or day. Another large section accepts piecework or timework with equal favour. Only about 20 per cent. fight against piecework. A larger percentage of trade unionists work by the piece than of the workers in occupations free from trade unionism. We have analysed fully elsewhere the reasons which make some trades prefer piecework and others timework. WE can only say here that all experience shows that where piecework is not accompanied by a collectively agreed upon standard list (and in many cases this is impossible) it inevitably leads to "sweating." This is, indeed, the conclusion of enlightened employers themselves -- see, for instance, the convincing testimony of the great shipbuilder William Denny, in his Life, by A.B. Bruce, p. 113. In other industries it is timework which may mean "sweating." It is noteworthy that it is often the employers who insist on changing from piecework to timework. Thus, "stab" (timework) among the compositors was introduced by the employers, in a trade that origianlly worked entirely on piecework. And, to come to more recent times, much of the friction in the boot and shoe trade has undoubtedly been due to the fact that the employers, when introducing new or additional machinery, frequently insisted on substituting time wages for piecework. They professed no hostility to piecework but they declared that the time was not opportune, or that they could not settle rates, and so on. But meanwhile they have often made men who had hiterto worked by the piece henceforth work for fixed wages, at a moment when their productivity was greatly increasing. No worder there has been trouble! The fact is, the problem of establishing, on a "cash nexus," such conditions of the wage contract as shall give the greatest possible stimulus, boht in workmen and employers, to the utmost productivity, and at the same time secure the maintenance and progressive improvement of the operatives' standard of life, is one of the most difficulat ever set to mortal man. It is doing no injustice to employers to say that, occupied only with one side of this problem, they have not, up to the present, contributed much to its solution -- even the best of them regarding it as no part of their business to rack their brains to discover how to maintain or raise the workman's standard of life. The trade unionists have had to puzzle out the answers for themselves. That they should, like the employers, have regarded primarily their own side of the problem was only to have been expected. The result is that, except in a few trades (and these, be it remarked, exactly the trades in which trade unionism is strongest), the problem has not been solved -- has, indedd, as yet scarcely been seriously grappled with -- either by masters or men. We hold no brief for trade unionism. We do not believe that trade unionism, by itself, can supply the solution of this problem of vital import to the community. We regard the legislation of Victoria and New Zealand as pointing a more excellent way. But we do not think that any instructed person doubts that the admirable collective arrangements which regulate employment in Lancashire cotton-spinning, or, in another form, Northumberland coalmining -- adopted maily at the instance of the trade unions concerned -- approach nearer to a solution of the problem than anything existing in other trades in the United Kingdom. On the other hand, the industries free form trade unionism, or analogous regulation by law, are exactly those in which the productivity per worker is at its lowest, the standard of effort at a *minimum*, the use of machinery most discouraged, and (what is perhaps to the community the most important fact) the character, intelligence, and physique of the workers undergoing a fatal deterioration. We need only refer in confirmation to the House of Lords' Committee Report on the Sweating System, and to the evidence obtained by the subsequent Royal Commission on Labour. In conclusion, surely it is too late to oppose trade unionism by a torrent of indiscriminate abuse. A campaign of libel and insinuation; a condemnation in one sentence of such utterly contradictory devices as the standard rate and the restriction of output; the omission of all references to the "sweating" devices of the employers which (in the interest of the community as well as their own) the workmen have somehow to parry -- all this gives an impression of ignorance and unfairness which deprives such a criticism of any useful effect. What is wanted is discrimination -- discrimination between those devices of trade unionism (such as the enforcement on all employers of a minimum standard rate, a normal day, and conditions of sanitation and safety) which economic science proves to be sound and to the benefit of the trades concerned and the community as a whole, and on the other hand those others (such as all forms of restriction of output, or opposition to improved processes) which do nothing but injure all parties. In English trade unionism, as we have proved elsewhere by elaborate statistics, the former constitute, fortunately, the predominant and the growing force. But indiscriminate abuse of trade unionism as such does not encourage the pary of progress within the trade-union movement. We are, &c., SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB. 41, Grosvenor-road, Westminster.
