in methods of production whereby the work of manufacture was subdivided and the principle of team work introduced. This necessitated conducting the work in factories where the workers carrying on the different processes of production could maintain an even pace. This same change from home work to factory work, as is well known, has taken place in countries like our own where no wages boards have been in existence. Of late years the decline in the number of registered home workers in the clothing trades of Victoria has been checked and there has been even a considerable increase. Thus in 1907, the Chief Inspector of Factories reported 1,455 registered home workers, all but 24 of whom were employed in various branches of the clothing trades, and he declared this to be " a larger number than has been registered for some years." 1 The only explanation offered for the increase was that "more work is being given out owing to the difficulty of securing enough workers to work in the factories."2 By 1911 the number of registered out-workers had increased to 1,929, but the growth in numbers was explained by the fact that an amendment to the Factories Act forbade " the giving out from any factory of any work on clothing except to a registered out-worker" and this increased the number of registrations and gave the inspectors a more complete oversight of the out-workers.3 The number of home workers regularly employed at their own homes in New South Wales was 730 in 1910, which represented an increase of 90 over the preceding year. They were nearly all found in Sydney, and were 1 Report of the Chief Inspector for 1907, p. 62. 2 Ibid. 3 Report of the Chief Inspector for 1911, p. 28. New South Wales Statistical Register for 1910, Part vi, p. 603; 1909, p. 527. principally females employed in the manufacture of clothing and textile fabrics. In South Australia there was an apparently enormous decline in the number of home workers from 1,075 in 1907 to only 20 in 1908. But the explanation for this is found in the fact that after 1907 only those home workers were required to register who were " engaged in the manufacture of articles for factories or shops" and this, as Mr. Bannigan said, reduced the number to "almost the vanishing point." 1 In Queensland the reduction in the number of home workers as a result of the wages boards' determinations has been very great. The Director of Labour in his report for 1913 says that the number of home workers in the ready-made clothing trade had fallen from 140 in 1909, the year before the award was made by the board, to 20 in 1913. He explains the decline as follows: I think the decrease may be attributed to the fact that the occupiers find it entails a very great amount of work keeping tally of the parts made by the workers, and also they consider the piecework rate too high for the working of their indoor or outside workers. The award piece-work rates are not in force in a single factory in Brisbane; all are on weekly wages.2 But while, generally speaking, the determinations of the wages boards seem to have reduced, for a time at least, the number of home workers in the clothing trades, the determinations in certain other trades had the opposite effect. In the wicker trade of Victoria, for example, a wages board which had been formed in 1902 made a determination which increased the average weekly wage from £1, 2s. 11d. ($5.57) to £1, 6s. 2d. ($6.54). There was keen competition in this trade 1 Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories in South Australia, 1907, p. 2. Report of the Director of Labour and Chief Inspector of Factories and Shops in Queensland for 1913, p. 24. with Sydney manufacturers who at the time were independent of any board award. The result was that the Melbourne manufacturers reduced the number of hands in their factories to less than half the number formerly employed and according to one of the inspectors, The result has been that all those who have been thrown out of the factories have started on their own, and work all hours with the result that they undersell those who have to pay wages and work limited hours.1 2. Wages and Working Conditions It is not possible in the compass of a single paper to show by means of statistics what effect the determinations of wages boards have had upon wages. Indeed, so numerous are the trades and the various branches thereof, so variable the number of workers, so diverse the modes of payment and so important the other elements entering into the situation, that it is doubtful whether even a complete tabulation of the changes made in the wages of the workers by the wages boards would throw any considerable light on the question as to what results have been achieved by this mode of wage regulation. The Statistician for the Commonwealth of Australia, Mr. G. H. Knibbs, a careful and scholarly investigator, has prepared a table which shows the variations in wage index-numbers in the different Australian states from 1891 (before there was any wages board or arbitration court in existence) to 1912, when all the states as well as the Commonwealth had tribunals for the regulation of wages. The table was prepared on the basis of average wages in 1911, the number, 1,000 being taken as the index-number for that year in all the states. 1 Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories in Victoria for 1902, p. 31. VARIATIONS IN WAGE INDEX-NUMBERS IN DIFFERENT STATES, The table shows that the relative increase from 1891 Without pretending to deny the accuracy of this con- The lowest point reached in the wage scale in nearly 1 From Knibbs, Report no. 2, Labour and Industrial Branch of Commonwealth Trade Unionism, Unemployment, Wages, Prices and Cost of Living in Australia, in Tasmania between 1896 and 1901 or between 1896 and 1906 was greater than in any other state, altho Tasmania was at the time without any method of legal regulation of wages; while it was during these years that the machinery for regulating wages was put in operation in all the other states, with the exception of Queensland. In the review of the work of the various boards which for years has been carried in the annual reports of the Chief Inspector of Factories in Victoria, the attention of the reader is directed to the average weekly wages paid to employees in the trade the year before the determination came into force and then to the average weekly wage paid in the same trade the year in which the report was made. The change is nearly always in the direction of an increase. Aside, however, from the fact that changes in the proportion of skilled and unskilled workers, or of men and women employees, or of adult and juvenile workers, will affect the average wage in the trade without necessarily affecting the wages of individual workers, it must be remembered that the period since 1896, when the Victorian wages board legislation was enacted, has been a period of rising wages and prices the world over. Therefore without any legislation the average wages in these Victorian trades might naturally be expected to have risen. Furthermore, the wage statistics for the trades for which no boards were provided almost universally show the same upward movement of wages. The question therefore becomes one of the relative rates of increase in the regulated and unregulated trades. Mr. Aves in his report1 has made a study of the variation in wages in selected board trades both before and 1 Op. cit., pp. 28–31. |