Skilled worker

“ In the great majority 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 attainments, all the way, for instance, from the ordinary laborer, through the trained laborer, helper, rough machinist, fitter, machine hand, to the highly skilled special or all-round mechanic. ”

“ In the final analysis, the problem of industrial training narrows down to the skilled industrial trades. Approximately 22 per cent of the total number of American workers in the city are employed in skilled manual occupations. ”

“ Consideration of the question of work for colored people shows that it presents three important features; (i) the opening of doors to new occupations so that skilled men will not have to stay in the common labor group all their lives; (2) getting men and women trained to perform skilled or unskilled labor and coaching them when on a job so that they will hold on ”

“ A bulletin of the office for June 25 states:
"Unskilled work is plentiful. Jobs in foundries and steel mills, in building and construction work, in light factories and packing houses, keep up a steady demand for semi-skilled laborers." ”

“ I know that I am expressing the opinion of some of the largest as well as the most enlightened employers of labor, when I say that there is a real danger that, from the extreme of no education, we may run to the other extreme of over-education of handicraftsmen. And I apprehend that what is true for the ordinary hand-worker is true for the foreman. Activity, probity, knowledge of men, ready mother-wit, supplemented by a good knowledge of the general principles involved in his business, are the making of a good foreman. ”

“ Now, if you will ask that old cooper, who was a skilled man and belonged to a union that represented skilled labor a few years ago—if you will ask him who the skilled man is, I think he can give you a satisfactory answer to your question. The skill of the trade is being gradually eliminated, and we are taking cognizance of that fact. We Industrial Workers recognize no aristocracy of skill. If any partiality were to be shown, however, I would give the unskilled man the benefit of it, because he needs it most. But there is no such discrimination in the Industrial Workers. ”

“ Then there are machinists, who must pass an examination, and stewards, carpenters, musicians, and the like. These special grades require skilled labor to some extent, and of course higher pay goes with their work. ”

“ It has been pointed out that the proportion at present received by the various grades of workers in an industry, from the man who manages the whole industry to those who do the least skilled work, will at first be maintained. ”

“ What is needed for the workers in this class of occupations and for those in the skilled trades, is that more attention be given to adequate training, that more facilities be offered and that a more sympathetic attitude be shown them in their efforts for better pay and better positions. ”

“ In this busy world there is honest work for every man to perform. Civilization has multiplied human wants and also developed the ingenuity necessary to gratify them. But it requires labor. Not such, however, as was performed by the slave, but skilled labor—labor where the hand is guided by an intellect, quickened by the agency of class-room and laboratory for the task assigned; labor, such as will reflect credit upon and elevate a gentleman. ”

“ The general introduction of such a plan of training would mean that the young worker would start out on his wage-earning career with an intelligent understanding of the modern world, and of his relations to his employer and to his fellow-laborers, instead of, as at present, setting forth with no knowledge of the world he is entering, and moreover, with his mind clogged with a number of utterly out-of-date ideas, as to his individual power of control over wages and working conditions. ”

“ Still, where any differences become noticeable to the employer in quantity of work, quality of work, or personal qualities of honesty, reliability, and good temper, the better workman is likely to obtain a better position, higher pay, more regular employment, or some other form of reward. The employer is more likely at the end of any period of employment, to discharge the man who falls short either in quantity or quality of work, and to retain and advance the better worker. ”

“ With our worker, just as sure as the sun rises and sets, if he continues to work and is no fool, he will rise to earn a competency, to improve himself, to own his own labor, to own his own home, to hire the labor of other men who are beginners as he once was himself. ”

“ Vocational training, as one of the mightiest weapons in the general system of cultural-industrial socialist education of the working class, may attain its object on condition that, together with the vocational training of the workers along the lines of skilled labor, they will also be given a general industrial education, acquainting them with the general questions of the condition of technical and industrial development, political economy, economic geography, and also the questions of administrative and technical management of an enterprise. ”

“ VTiere a new industry, especially in. rural districts, lias to be created ; where decaying industries need to be revived ; where machinery is superseding hand work, and, owing to the demands for ordinary hands, there is a dearth of skilled workmen ; where through the effects of competition and other causes the trade is carried on under conditions in which competent workmen cannot be properly -tiained in the ordinary shop, — in these cases, and in various art industries, an apprenticeship school may prove to be the best means of training workmen, and of advancing particular trades. ”

“ Toward the close of the era the masters were, typically, employers of skilled labour and foremen in their own shop, except in the frequent case where they altogether ceased to work at the trade and gave their whole attention to the business side of the industry. ”

“ Next to the beginner in industry or business, the boy or girl starting his or her vocational career, the class to which the application of scientific mental tests is of the greatest benefit to employer and worker alike is the large group of unskilled, untrained workers, men and women of no particular trade, the “floaters” and seasonal workers, who turn their hands to whatever employment opportunity offers without developing especial skill at any one recognized trade or occupation. ”

“ On the other hand, skilled laborers would want skill and talent to be the main factors in determining wages, arguing that they had worked hard to become proficient and that their talent and skill made the work more valuable to the state. ”

“ If every job in our place required skill the place would never have existed. Sufficiently skilled men to the number needed could not have been trained in a hundred years. A million men working by hand could not even approximate our present daily output. No one could manage a million men. ”

“ For in all those higher forms of work which involve not only expert workmanship but a spiritual content of some kind, the worker must bring to his task not only skill but ideas, force, personality, temperament; and, sound workmanship being secured, his rank will depend not on specific expertness, but on the depth, energy, and splendour of the personality which the work reveals. ”

“ The ideal for every employee, therefore, is that he should be employed in that position which he is best fitted to fill, doing work which by natural aptitudes, training, and experience he is best qualified to do, and working under conditions of material environment—tools, rates of pay, hours of labor, and periods of rest, superintendence and management, future prospects, and education—which will develop and make useful to himself and his employer his best and finest latent abilities and capacities. ”

“ All the tools for the machines must be ground, repaired, and in most cases “set up”—more work for which skilled men alone are suitable. In short, in the United States of America, the skilled men enjoy better conditions, a higher status, and receive greater real wages than the skilled men in this country. ”

“ The analysis of the industry shows that in each occupation or job there is a definite amount of knowledge which must be acquired by the efficient worker. A study of this analysis and of the examples of technical knowledge needed by the worker at different points in the industry will show that no such thing as a general course is possible. In every case the character of the instruction should be such that it will answer a definite need of the employee. ”

“ Just as there is a way of turning all the energy of the play instinct into school work, so there is a way of interesting the factory and office worker in his job. However mechanical work may be, there is always the interest in becoming the most efficient worker in a room or a trade. ”

“ Some of these occupations may appear out of the way, and even romantic, to the girl who is choosing her work, or who is already at work in some paid employment. But in every case, the pioneer worker needs special training and experience. New work requires more originality, perseverance, and if possible better preparation than may be necessary in standard employments. ”

“ What is to be done for hundreds of laborers who are thus excluded from the fields of honest livelihood? There is no likelihood that these avenues will ever be opened and unless he can find employment among his own people of what value is his skill as an artisan to him and of what use is the acquiring of such a training? The only answer to this question is that the Colored laborer must thoroughly prepare himself and be on the ground ready for action. ”

“ This position calls for a man who is able, personally, to carry out the detailed written orders of the instruction card in regard to speeds, feeds, cuts, methods of operation, quality and quantity.
He must be proficient at the art of imparting his knowledge to other workmen, and at the same time be able to secure the prescribed outputs and quantities. He need not be the fastest worker in the shop, but he should be one of the most intelligent workers and best teachers, with a keen desire to coöperate, both with the workers and with the other foremen. ”

“ Skill is but a primary labour-saving apparatus engrafted by mind on eye and limb, and it is in developing the mental faculties of the labourers by well-directed training, both general and technical, that the chief conditions for their further improvement lie. ”

“ Intellectual keenness and foresight in the wage worker is one of the essential factors in the success of the employer. Workers must be interested in their work; they must work for the firm; they must apply themselves seriously to the tasks in hand. ”

“ Illustrated with pictures of successful work that the workers themselves have done, often containing pictures of the men themselves that illustrate successful methods, with mention of the names of men who have offered valuable suggestions or inventions, they make the worker feel his part in successful results. They conserve the old spirit of coöperation between the master and his apprentices. ”

“ Just as there are plenty of genuine Skilled Workmen, so also are there numbers of Men of Business who, thanks to their capacity and to the advantage that they have taken of experience, constitute real assets to the nation. Latter-day events have, however, taught us that the majority of the individuals who pose as Skilled Workmen are in reality engaged on operations which anybody in full power of his faculties and of the most ordinary capacity can learn to carry on within a very few hours, if not within a very few minutes. ”

“ In the last place here, we must now look at the Demand for the personal services of Professional laborers. These are persons, who have done something more with reference to their life-work than serve an apprenticeship to a trade, or acquire some mechanical skill in connection with some kind of machinery. An Education rather than an Apprenticeship is implied in Professional laborers. Knowledge of the bodies and of the minds of men ”

“ So, where there are different kinds of labor, some simple, others complicated, and of course requiring different degrees of intelligence and skill, it is easy to observe what class of persons rise from a lower to a higher grade of employment.
This, too, is not to be forgotten, that in a manufacturing or mechanical establishment, or among a set of hands engaged in filling up a valley or cutting down a hill, where scores of people are working together, the absurd and adventitious distinctions of society do not intrude. ”

“ The rank and, file, too, get the splendid training that is conferred when persons actually and not merely nominally work together for a common end. Their introduction to the great problems of labor is through their practical understanding and handling of those problems as they encounter them in the everyday difficulties of the shop and the factory and as dealt with when they come up before the union meeting or have to be settled in bargaining with an employer. ”

“ Technicians who work with the labor movement must often do so at a considerable financial sacrifice. But it does mean that the technical and professional functions of the labor movement can operate in health, and can grow as they should, only if labor pays the technicians wages commensurate with their skill and training. ”

“ Yet, as the workshop has its own education for men, and gives us the order known as the "intelligent workman," so it gives us also the no less intelligent workwoman, possessing not only the natural womanly gift of many resources, but the added power of just so much technical training as she may have received in her apprenticeship to her trade. ”