Word: pieceworkers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Outside, 63 United Auto Workers pickets tromped the sidewalk, brandished their placards ("No peace with piecework"), chanted their songs ("Ailes is a horse thief, we shall not be moved"). As a 25-man detachment of Detroit's riot squad roared up in answer to Husband Ailes's summons, the marchers hopefully switched their lyrics: "The police will protect us, we shall not be moved." But police were moved to hustle them off-in patrol wagons...
...Johnson's best argument was his own company. It now has the highest minimum wage in the industry. Average hourly earnings for day work, excluding overtime and premiums, are 76? for women and 85? for men, while piecework rates run higher. In his southern textile mills Johnson pays a minimum now of 65?-at least 10? higher than competitors...
...real production stranglehold is the "quota." The quota started as a scheme to beat the hated production speed-up which workers suspect in Akron's piecework system. In the past, faster work often meant that the company would cut the payrate per piece. Thus, to make certain they do not work harder for less money, workers in many departments set their own quotas. This has been brought to such scientific control that many pieceworkers collect the same amount in their paychecks-down to the last cent. For long, companies approved the quota-it kept skilled employes from burning themselves...
...strike started when 16 female button sewers at a Hart Schaffner & Marx factory, earning $3 to $8 a week, walked out over a 4? reduction in piecework pay. (One of the 16 strikers was round-faced, Russian-born Bessie Abramovitz, whom Hillman later married.) For three weeks, more & more workers left their sweatshops until the 16 strikers had become 41,000. Each night there were meetings, usually at Hull House, addressed by Welfare Worker Jane Addams, Lawyer Clarence Darrow, and the strike leaders...
Incentive Pay. But the deepest quagmire for production was a fantastic incentive pay plan. Colt had always had incentive pay. When mass production came to Colt, it kept the same piecework rates as for the slow handwork. Thus semiskilled filers came to earn as high as $8,200 a year, while the highly skilled toolmakers made as little as $3,000 a year. Result: many workers drew big pay for little work, had no incentive to work harder, fearing rates would be cut if wages, became too fantastic. Colt went through a series of small strikes. The War Labor Board...