Temporary worker

“ Nothing is from this point of view more characteristic than the designation of the workers who work full time as "full-timers," and the children under 13 who are only allowed to work 6 hours as "half-timers." The worker is here nothing more than personified labour-time. All individual distinctions are merged in those of "full-timers" and "half-timers." [30]
section 3.—branches of english industry without legal limits to exploitation. ”

“ Every wage earner who has worked without interruption not less than a year shall be entitled to leave of absence for one month, irrespective of whether he worked in only one or in several enterprises, establishments or institutions. ”

“ So maker's right as an alternative to taking the advice of Jesus would not work. In practice nothing was possible in that direction but to pay a worker by labor time so much an hour or day or week or year. ”

“ TED. [Desperately, humiliated.] I applied for relief because I wanted a job; because the only way to get a job is to go on relief first. I haven't anything. I have no source of income.
CASE WORKER. [Sarcastic.] No income, but plenty of money? I understand!
MARTIN. I was about to explain ...
CASE WORKER. [Shortly.] You needn't. You can't bamboozle me. It's most unfortunate, isn't it, that I caught him unawares? Had he known I was coming he'd undoubtedly have dressed more correctly for the role of a relief applicant.
KATE. Oh, how dare you? ”

“ But some of the extra time is utterly necessary for immediate recuperation after a heavy job or a hot one. And none of the spells, it should be noticed, are "your own time." You're under strain for twelve hours. Nerves and will are the Company's the whole shift—whether the muscles in your hands and feet move or are still. And the existence of the long day makes possible unrelieved labor, hard and hot, the whole turn of fourteen hours, if there is need for it. ”

“ The "long turn" of twenty-four hours and the "seven-day week" I have never heard defended, either in the mill by any foreman or workman, or outside by any member of the management, or even in a public statement. If, by an arrangement of extra workers, it were possible to eliminate these features and still keep the twelve-hour work-day for six days a week, there would, I think, be a certain number of men ready enough to work under that arrangement. I met one man, for example, who said: "Good job, [Pg 151] work all time, no spend, good job save." ”

“ If it protects the employer in reducing to a minimum the chances of his being left without a servant, it also makes his life a burden during the long period that intervenes between the notice and the time when it takes effect. ”

“ The fluctuations in employment due to changes of season, as in the building trades, and many branches of dock labour, or to changes of fashion, as in the silk and "fancy" woollen trade, or to temporary changes in the field of employment caused by a transformation of industrial processes, are direct causes of a considerable quantity of temporary unemployment. ”

“ But then a workman has frequently to labor for ten or more years at such a piece. The wages of the workmen are not very high; I was told, however, that after a certain number of years of service they receive a pension, which is granted in a shorter period should they become blind over their work—a calamity which not unfrequently befalls them. ”

“ When the day’s work is completed the workman, if paid on time, will frequently remain at work, but doing nothing until the “hooter goes.” In other cases if paid on a piece-work basis, the workman will sometimes leave the shop after his day’s work or “stint” is finished. I have investigated cases where workmen coming on at 7 a.m. ”

“ The day-laborer, when his work is done, receives the wages of his labor, and goes to his home content and with a cheerful spirit, whistling on his way, his mind free from all perplexing plans and cares, and enjoys his evening in pleasant intercourse with his family and neighbors, and, when he retires to rest, has the blessing of sound sleep, the reward of his healthful toil: while his wealthy employer, whose lot he may perhaps be unwisely inclined to envy, has, perchance, his mind agitated and his rest disturbed by busy schemes and worrying doubts and anxieties. ”

“ We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. ”

“ About one-half of the employes, however, are temporary, being engaged for services lasting for a few days or a few months only, largely in the field, and coming under two classes: Skilled laborers and common laborers. ”

“ Though their employment is steadier than that of the migratory laborer, and though they often have ties of family and other stabilizing responsibilities, their lives are subject to periods of unemployment, and these fluctuations serve to feed their innate restlessness. ”

“ All hands together we'll make our demand;
When you and I, Bill, lay down our tools, Bill,
Fold up your arms, Bill, and walk off the job.
Why does a short work day and a long pay always go together? ”

“ For illustration, factory workers are customarily employed at will, without obligation of employer or employed to continue the relationship when the day's work is done; or, if there is an agreement fixing salary or wages per unit of service, at so much per day, week or month, there may be an indefinite employment terminable by either party at the end of any unit period. ”

“ Second, The statute does not provide that the employer and the laborer may not agree with each other as to what time shall constitute a day's work. There are some branches of labor, connected with furnaces, foundries, steam or gas works, where the labor and the exposure of eight hours a day would soon exhaust the strength of a laborer, and render him permanently an invalid. ”

“ The laborer whom he saw in the early morning swinging his dinner pail while with light steps he marched to the daily task in mill and factory, and whom he watched in the evening's dusk after the factory sirens had blown the working man's curfew, hurrying home anxious to reach his humble fireside, and for whom heretofore he had only known feelings of deepest contempt, suddenly had become a man who benefitted preciously far more of his life than any yegg he could recall. ”

“ In other words, the workmen should receive wages which assure them an adequate support, and when they cease work, becoming feeble or helpless, they should receive from the owner of the factory a sufficient pension. ”

“ There were some indentured servants who willingly entered upon their temporary bondage, poor persons who agreed to serve for a fixed term in return for transportation to America, but they were not numerous. The third class of domestic servants were the free help, the only real wage-workers in this occupation, and it is they with whom we have to concern ourselves. ”

“ The attempt to starve the strikers into submission will result in a trial of endurance, the duration of which will depend on the state of preparation of the strikers, the means accumulated or the aid they receive for their support while out of work, and, on the other hand, upon the views the employers take of their own interest as to the length of time during which they can permit their business to be suspended. ”

“ The hand-worker, the clerk and the small tradesman, generally insecure in the tenure of their occupations and homes, are anxious and restless, while many classes suffer special and grievous wrongs, such as exhaustion and premature old age, due to the nervous strain of certain kinds of work, death and mutilation from machinery, life in squalid tenements, and the debasement of children by bad surroundings and premature work. ”

“ He surveys a job, and meditates upon it for an hour—at your expense; begins it, and goes away to fetch a tool that he has forgotten—the time of his absence being duly charged against you; procrastinates and dawdles; sits down to read the paper, if no one watches him; and in one way and another takes quite twice as long over a job as is needed, and then does it badly. When I first became a householder in London I naturally sent to some neighbouring employer of labour for any little jobs of carpentering and plumbing that needed to be done. ”

“ Where this is done all employees engaged in the usual course of the trade, business, occupation, or profession of their employer, with some exceptions, receive compensation. Ordinarily, an employment is casual when it is for a single day, or by the hour, but does not apply to one who is employed to render a service that recurs with some regularity. Thus, one who is employed as a workman in a sawmill on such days as it was in operation for four months was not a casual employee. ”

“ With regard to the long working hours, which certainly appear very oppressive to the unemployed spectator, long habit has accustomed the workers to them, and they do not produce any perceptible injury, more especially as the people are paid in proportion to the time they are employed. It is to be remembered that there remain eight hours for rest, none of which are spent in going and coming to their homes, as is the case in other countries, as, for instance, in Mulhausen, where one-third of the workers live from one to two miles from the mill. ”

“ They’re not forced by the company to work seven days a week—only they’re not given pay enough to let them take even one day off without feeling it. This very motorman I was talking with got to telling me why he was working so extra hard just then. ”

“ All they imagined as possible or desirable was a little better treatment by their employers, a few cents more an hour, a few minutes less working time a day, or maybe merely the discharge of an unpopular foreman. ”

“ Many of you have been used to receiving your wages at the end of the week,—then only barely sufficient to provide for your wants during the coming week. How did you manage in cases of sickness, when you could not work? ”

“ A short vacation granted during the year without loss of wages has in many localities come to be regarded by employees as one of the prerogatives of the occupation, and not, as formerly, a special privilege given. All things considered, it is a matter of surprise that so much rather than that so little time is given. In other occupations a vacation can be granted employees during a dull season without loss to the employer. But the household machinery cannot stop action without disaster. ”

“ The employee who has failed leaves, is dismissed, or is transferred to another department, and a new and equally inexperienced worker employed to fill the vacancy, with the whole cost of training to be incurred over again. Even though the new worker may be 5experienced in the particular class of work to be done, there is an appreciable loss due to the unavoidable frictions and hesitations that occur whenever a worker is being fitted into a new environment. ”

“ As all work, men and women alike, and as machinery has been brought here to a wonderful degree of perfection, the actual labor necessary to maintain the people is, of necessity, very light. At first, a hundred or so years ago, in the early days of the community, the time of labor was fixed at five hours per day. But every decade, with the growth of the population, the labor hours have been diminishing. ”

“ In many states the hours of labour have been limited by law in occupations in which, on account of their dangerous or insanitary character, the health of the employés would be jeopardized by long hours of labour, or in which the fatigue occasioned by long hours would endanger the lives of the employés or of the public. The occupations for which such special legislation has been enacted are those of employés on steam and street railways, in mines and other underground workings, smelting and refining works, bakeries and cotton and woollen mills. ”

“ Limitation of the weekly total of hours of work of persons under eighteen years of age to seventy-four inclusive of meal-times; (2) prohibition of the employment of such persons in a shop on the same day that they have, to the knowledge of the employer, been employed in any factory or workshop for a longer period than would, in both classes of employment together, amount to the number of hours permitted to such persons in a factory or workshop ”

“ There was a rule prohibiting us from leaving the mill during work-hours. We were not supposed to sit down, even though we had caught up with our work. We were never supposed to stop work, even when we could. There was a rule that anyone coming to work a minute late would lose his work. The outside watchman always closed the gate the instant the starting whistle sounded, so that anyone unfortunate enough to be outside had to go around to the office, lose time, and find a stranger on his job, with the prospect of being out of work for some time to come. ”

“ You figure the smokeless blue sky above London dotted all over with airships in which the holiday-making tenth are re-creating themselves for the labour of next week—looking down a little wistfully, perhaps, at the workshops from which they are temporarily banished. And here I scent a difficulty. So attractive a thing will labour be in the Dawn that a man will be tempted not to knock off work when his Cessation Day comes round, and will prefer to work for no wage rather than not at all. ”

“ Since the statutory workweek includes all time during which an employee is necessarily required to be on the employer's premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace, the time spent in these activities must be accorded appropriate compensation. ”

“ We judicially know that the question of the number of hours during which a workman should continuously labor has been, for a long period, and is yet, a subject of serious consideration among civilized peoples and by those having special knowledge of the laws of health. ”

“ Our coolies, if called upon to roll up our bedding, whether from lack of inclination or from physical weakness we know not, would look morose, or call in, if at a station, additional help to share in the labor, and never fail at the end of the day to ask for compensation for the annas expended on their co-workers. ”