Turnover

“ The matter of labour turnover has not since bothered us; it is rather hard to give exact figures because when we are not running to capacity, we rotate some of the men in order to distribute the work among greatest number. ”

“ If the turnover consumes less than the time ordinarily allowed in the line of industry in which he is engaged, he gains more than the current rate of profits in that line of business, other things equal ”

“ The length of time occupied by the turnover may vary from one establishment to another, but in any given case the length of the turnover is one of the important factors that determine the chances of gain for the business concern in question. Indeed, if the general conditions of the trade and of the market are given, the two factors which determine the status and value of a given sound concern, as seen from the business man's standpoint, are the magnitude of the turnover and the length of time it occupies.
The business man's object is to get the largest aggregate gain from his business. ”

“ Mamise saw that most of the employees were employees because they lacked the self-starter of ambition. They were lazy-minded, and even their toiling bodies were lazy. For all their appearance of effort they did not ordinarily attain an efficiency of thirty per cent. of their capabilities. The turnover in employment was three times what it should have been. Three hundred men were hired for every hundred steadily at work, and the men at work did only a third of the work they could have done. The total wastefulness of man rivaled the ghastly wastefulness of nature with spawn and energy. ”

“ In this higher development of corporation finance, in the manipulations of vendible capital, the interval of the turnover spoken of above becomes an indeterminate factor. The gains of the business come to have but an uncertain and shifty relation to the lapse of time and cannot well be calculated per cent. ”

“ Most places hate to discharge a man. Labor turnover is too expensive. Most of them try to place their men in the positions for which they are best suited. It is easier to take a round peg [Pg 65] out of a square hole and put it into a round one than it is to send out for another assortment of pegs. Men are transferred from sales departments to accounting departments, are taken off the road and brought into the home office, and are shifted about in various ways until they fit. ”

“ He adjusts this time of turnover by adjusting his average quantity of pocket money, or till money, to suit his expenditures. He will try to avoid carrying too little lest, on occasion, he be unduly embarrassed ”

“ Truax doesn’t, but you do know—that the whole office system makes pale, timid, nervous people out of all the clerks—”
“But, good heavens! child, the employers have just as hard a time. Talk about being nervous! Take it in our game. The salesman does the missionary work, but the employer is the one who has to worry. Take some big deal that seems just about to get across—and then falls through just when you reach for the contract and draw a breath of relief. ”

“ When there were rumors of “a change,” of “a cut-down in the force,” every person on the office floor watched the chiefs as they assembled to go out to lunch together—big, florid, shaven, large-chinned men, talking easily, healthy from motoring and golf, able in a moment’s conference at lunch to “shift the policy” and to bring instant poverty to the families of forty clerks or four hundred workmen in the shops. When they jovially entered the elevator together, some high-strung stenographer would rush over to one of the older women to weep and be comforted.... ”

“ Duty-labour calls the days of fair sky and sunshine, and leaves him the gloomy hours of winter, when, with darkness without, and despair within, he may brood, as he digs, over the disproportioned fortunes of his tyrant and himself! ”

“ I should have been unobservant indeed, if, with such masters as I have served under, I had not learnt something, in regard to the duties of a great employer of labour, from witnessing their ever-flowing courtesy; their care for those who came within their sphere; their anxiety, as the heads of departments, to recognize every exertion on the part of their subordinates; and their ready sympathy with the poor and the friendless, a sympathy which the vexations and harassments of office, and all those things that tend to turn a man’s thoughts in upon himself, could never subdue. ”

“ Accustom all the servants under your direction to rise early, and let them breakfast at an early hour. If orders be given betimes in the morning, there will be more time to execute them,—servants will perform their work with more ease,—and less hands will be required. If the economy of time were duly considered, and a regular plan of daily employment laid down, much business may be effected without hurry or fatigue. ”

“ ACT I.—"PAST."—Interior of the Savings Bank Department of the G.P.O. Employés engaged upon their work. The hour for customary cessation of labour strikes.
Official of a Higher Grade. Officers and Gentlemen, the exigencies of the Public Service require your presence for some time longer. I beg you to continue your work.
A Hundred Employés. Never! (Aside.) Ha! ha! the employment of Female Clerks is avenged!
Off. (almost in tears) . Reconsider your decision, I beg—I implore!
Another Hundred Employés. Never! (Aside.) Seven hours a day and no longer—shall be secured at one fell swoop! ”

“ And then if they are fagged, and he don't think they'll be able to keep up the pace he wants them to work at, he pays them off for two hours' work, and then goes to the gates for another batch—sixty this time, most likely, because at eleven o'clock the labour-master will be round to see how they are getting on, and to see that the number of workers are all right. ”

“ Each worker had his allotted place and his strictly defined and invariable duty. Everyone had to work, steadily and without stopping, under the vigilant eye of a foreman who secured obedience by means of fines, physical means, or dismissals. Work started, meals were eaten, and work stopped at fixed hours, signaled by the ringing of a bell. Factory hours were typically fourteen hours or more. Organized resistance, as usual, began not with those most ill-treated, but with those men who had some bargaining power through their skills. ”

“ We all know, as do the labor leaders, that no general manager ever went through a long strike, successful or unsuccessful, without ultimately losing his job. The directors start out with the best intentions of supporting him. As the struggle grows fiercer, the temporarily reduced earnings have a refrigerating effect on their feet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The indifference of the employers and their ignorance as to the proper system of management to adopt and the method of applying it, and further their indifference as to the individual character, worth, and welfare of their men. On the part of the men the greatest obstacle to the attainment of this standard is the slow pace which they adopt, or the loafing or "soldiering,'" marking time, as it is called. ”

“ Hazleton and your board of directors have ample fortunes, you see no enormity in requiring men with large families to work twelve hours, exposed to rain, sleet, sun, and if, overcome with fatigue, they fail to awake in time to report for duty at the exact minute your schedule demands, they are 'laid off for three days' as punishment. No day of rest to spend at home; nothing to anticipate but the ceaseless grind, grind—worse than that of driving wheels and pistons in machinery, which are allowed to stop and cool on Sunday. ”

“ This resignation which makes each one among you, even the greatest, only an insignificant detail-worker upon the immense labor whose completion you contemplate at an infinite remove, and the very outlines of which you ignore,—this resignation is sublime, though supremely painful to the aspiring soul. The individual laborer for his part abstains from all hope of seeing the whole truth, and works for his generation and futurity. ”

“ I began by taking the abuses in "discipline"—chiefly fines for being late and talking and "fooling" during work-hours. Many I abolished; others I reduced to merely nominal sums, even for the old wages received. A low, strong buzzing, distinctly favourable in character, greeted me at the conclusion of the list. ”

“ It is recognized now that satisfactory hours and wages and working conditions in industry and a bargaining position which makes these possible have an importance which is not less than the interests of those in the business or industry directly concerned. ”

“ I thought I made a number of enemies among the men while I was head of the mill committee. When a man dissipated and afterward came back to work, trembling and weak, the boss would refuse to let him take up his tools, but would lay the man off for a few days. The man usually thought this a useless and cruel punishment; and to lose a few days' wages would make him all the poorer. ”

“ That mass of humanity, pushed from behind, would have wrecked the offices. The manager of the employment department opened a window and shouted to the frantic crowd that there were no jobs, but the sound of his voice was lost in the roar that greeted him. ”

“ Now, when your single man under the supervision of a speed boss, gang boss, etc., runs day after day at the given speed and feed, and gets work out in the time that the instruction card calls for, and when a premium is kept for him in the office for having done the work in the required time, you begin to have a moral suasion on that workman which is very powerful. ”

“ The setting of a time in which the work is to be done is a great stimulus to the worker, and is also necessary, because upon the attainment of this set time depends the ability of the managers to pay the bonus to the worker, and also to maintain a schedule, or time-table, that will make possible the maintaining of necessary conditions for others, in turn, to earn their bonuses. ”

“ Toil in one guise or another but always with the same harsh voice and the same frowning eyes, bossing some job in a manner which would cost him his boss-ship right off the reel in these times when union labor is so touchy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To this end, then, toils the employer of every grade, bringing every faculty to bear on the lessening of waste, whether in material or time; the conservation of every force working in line with his purpose. Naturally, the same effect is produced as that mentioned in a previous paper. The employees come to represent “so much producing power,” and are driven at full speed or shut off suddenly like the machines of which they are the necessary but still more or less accidental associates. ”

“ Is it not better to keep twenty men steadily employed than to have forty on half time? The unquestioned deterioration in the quality of our labor, in the morale of our forces, can- not all be laid on the union’s doorstep. ”

“ Probably not one of these men ever seriously dreamed that an event could occur that would, in the course of a few swift weeks, blot out the record of his life work, and deprive him of all opportunity for promotion, for pension, and even for employment. ”

“ The fact remains that with management carrying the whole load, the march is going very badly indeed on the whole. At times the procession scarcely seems to move. There can surely be no harm in the employing end shifting a bit of the burden. ”

“ But thoughtful managers of industrial enterprise tell you, incredible as it may seem, that the worker's objection to applying himself to his task is not invariably overcome by anticipation of the wage return; he will slack or be perverse or throw over a job in the face of opportunities to earn as good a wage or a better one than he can get elsewhere. ”

“ At the end of the nineteenth century the cry arose for compelling the masters to employ their men a less number of hours in the day: this cry gathered volume quickly, and the masters had to yield to it. But it was, of course, clear that unless this meant a higher price for work per hour, it would be a mere nullity, and that the masters, unless forced, would reduce it to that. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some resign office, of others it is decided that they have been too long at their posts, and the result is that a certain number of old and faithful workers cut themselves, or are themselves cut adrift. ”

“ There are few men who are fitted for the work who are willing to take the places with the low salaries and uncertain tenure [Pg 322] of office. In many cases attendants and keepers are ignorant and brutal and by their defects neutralise any reformatory effect. ”

“ The difficulty of stopping business there is very great; the injury of delay very heavy: but the wages of labour are so good that there is [Pg 62] less cause for discontent on the part of the workmen than elsewhere. ”

“ In several instances agents have found the labor so great and the compensation so small that they have surrendered their positions to accept a larger salary, with less labor and responsibility, in other fields. ”

“ The gap between ordinary wage work and managerial work 14 and ownership is in most industries great—the path upward hard to discover.
The jobs which carry the easiest opportunities for advancement in many important industries are now the subordinate positions in the various executive, administrative or sales branches. ”