Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Social Movements - 1. Labour Questions and Social politics - Labour Conditions and Workmen's Wages. By B. Nyström
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labour conditions and workmen’s wages.
639
number of branches of industry or occupations which have largely assumed the
character of industry. (Cf. below). A study of these agreements, which are
often remarkable for great precision and wealth of detail, will serve in a great
measure to cast light and to throw into relief the salient points in the working
conditions of the various occupations. But, if one would convince oneself that
the discription actually represents the industrial working conditions as they are,
and not merely as they are intended to be, the information furnished by trade
(collective) agreements as to the maximum hours of labour and the minimum
wages for workmen with a normal working capacity are supplemented and checked
by data obtained direct from employers and employed as to the actual working
hours and the wages actually paid during a certain known period of time.
As to hours of labour, data of the latter kind are obtainable from a report
published by the Board of Trade on the length of working hours in industry
and handicraft in 1905, affecting about 345 000 workmen. It will be seen
from this report that the average net working day for workmen in different
classes of occupation ranged between 8’b and 10’6 hours, and on an average for
all groups was 10 hours.
However, the ordinary working hours can be both shortened and lengthened.
Thus many branches of industry have seasons, which means that work of great
amount can only be procured during certain periods of the year. (See infra).
When there is a pressure of work in a certain branch, the work may be
extended to the evenings or to Sundays and bank holidays, in which case
however, extra pay is given for overtime work. Another system is to arrange the
workmen in relays or shifts. But there are also industries in which, in the
regular course, the work is carried on by relays of workmen succeeding one
another, these relays consisting either solely of certain groups of workmen, as
for example burners in tile-works, engine-men and stokers, etc., or else of the
bulk of the factory personnel, as in the case of the sugar, the mining, the
iron, the sawmill, the wood pulp, and the paper industries. The shifts are
usually arranged as 12-hour shifts with two relays succeeding one another, or
else as 8-hour shifts, in which case the working hours on an average per
workman and day will be 12 hours, if two shifts are employed, but only 8 hours,
when three relays are employed. Particularly in the mining and iron industry
however, there occur alongside of these main kinds of shift, also other forms of
shift organized in accordance with quite different principles.
As to the wages in the industrial occupations, the sources of information flow
rather sparingly, to some extent even more sparingly than in the case of
agriculture. Whereas in the case of the agricultural labourers, as has already been
stated, the development of wages can be followed for nearly half a century
back, as legards industrial workmen there exists merely a very scanty material
of this nature. The stray items with respect to the wages and working
conditions of this class of workmen obtainable from available courses must moreover
be treated with great caution, in consideration of the rapid progress which
industry is undergoing with respect to economy and organization.
However, an extremely characteristic feature for the development of wages in
the industrial occupations should be pointed out, namely the increasing
substitution of wages in cash for wages in kind. Whereas in a number of
crafts, as for instance the bakery, the shoemaking, and the tailoring trades, it
was formerly the rule that the apprentice was to receive free board and lodging,
the struggles the workmen have been waging against this form of
remuneration have now been crowned with complete success; the lodging system has
been abolished in principle, and occurs only in places where the workmen
encounter obvious difficulties in procuring board and lodging for a tolerably
reasonable price. In former days the miners in the Bergslagen district, by way
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