BOOK REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 March 1966 |
| Date | 01 March 1966 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1966.tb00939.x |
BOOK REVIEWS
Hours
of
Work
by Clyde
E.
Dankert, Floyd
C.
Mann, Herbert
R.
Northrup
(Eds.). Harper and Row, New York,
1965,
208
pp.,
$3.50.
SHORTER
hours of work have long been the goal of trade unions in all parts
of the world. The exact form of the objective and the methods of achieving
it have varied considerably between different countries. This book covers
many of the factors affecting the hours people work during their lifetime,
particularly in the United States.
In contrast with the United Kingdom, the main argument put up by
the advocates of shortening working hours in North America has been that
it would help solve the unemployment problem. This argument is
mentioned in most of the chapters of this short book. It
is
consistently
refuted on the grounds that the increased costs that would result from
a
reduction of hours could actually reduce employers’ demands for labour
rather than cause them to seek more employees. The argument is quite
convincing, but it would be more
so
if an example were given of this
actually happening in one of the many industries or countries in which
standard hours have been reduced.
It
is the lack of link between the theoretical, empirical, historical,
economic and sociological approaches to the questions considered that is the
major shortcoming
of
this otherwise valuable book. The theoretical dis-
cussion of overtime working in chapter six is based on the willingness of
people to work overtime being determined by premium payment for
additional hours. In chapter one, however, an inquiry is reported which
showed that long hours of work were considerably more prevalent among
those
izot
receiving premium pay for overtime work than among those who
v;ere.
The chapters on hours of work in Canada and on the relationship
between hours and output involve the best attempt in the book to test
theories and models on the basis of the fairly full information available in
Korth America. Although the data used do not always enable a distinction
to be made between standard hours and actual hours, both these chapters
conclude that the available evidence suggests that
a
reduction in weekly
hours below forty will result in
a
fall in output.
Aluch of the discussion is inevitably in terms of changes in the working
week.
But,
as
the book clearly demonstrates, other factors have played
a
part in the reduction in each individual’s contribution to the annual labour
supply. Vacations, holidays and paid sick leave have all been significant
and must to some extent have been offset by the extension of moonlighting.
4’6
BOOK
REVIEWS
4’7
These are important developments and certain aspects of most of them are
dealt with by the numerous contributors. The effect is to whet the appetite
for a fuller and more integrated treatment of the whole subject.
E.
G.
WHYBREW
Wage Trends, Wage Policies, and Collective Bargaining
:
the Problems
for
Under-
developed Countries
by
H.
A. Turner. Cambridge University Press, 1965,
76
pp.,
10s.
6d.
THIS
is the sixth in the series of Occasional Papers published by the Cam-
bridge Department ofApplied Economics, whose brevity and concentration
afford such an admirable example for other economists to ignore.
The theme of the present volume, as summarized in a concluding note,
is that ‘the system of collective bargaining which has been frequently
advocated
-
and almost subconsciously adopted by the International
Labour Organization
-
as an ideal for industrial relations generally is in
fact largely Anglo-Saxon in origin and concept: and both the British
Industrial Revolution and the course
of
American social and economic
growth which engendered this concept may be considered unique events,
the exact circumstances of which are unlikely to be repeated in the develop-
ment of new countries’.
This is a work for specialists, the argument tough and sometimes
difficult to follow, and not only because the sentences are
so
long. The
statistics presented in Chapter
I
are at a high level of generalization. They
indicate that money wage levels in undeveloped countries have been rising
fast
-
faster than prices and faster than national product
-
thus causing a
redistribution of income in favour of employees. This is accompanied by a
very large random or accidental element in wage-differences. Professor
Turner found ‘that craftsmen employed by some smaller firms in an
African city were paid less than the labourers of large concerns; and that a
variation of four to one in the wages of driver-mechanics existed within the
quite small area of Ruanda
-
and that there was a similar variation in the
salaries of identically-qualified engineers employed by different organiza-
tions on a Middle-Eastern project’.
The rest of the book is in the form, as it were, of an encyclical in which
Professor Turner generalizes
ex cathedra,
a method favoured by the French
and usually disastrous when not applied by someone of wide experience,
keen powers of observation and diagnosis and the gift of empathy. Since
Professor Turner possesses these qualities, the result is instead provocative
and illuminating.
The problem is to encourage a labour movement (an essential part of
the fabric of democracy) but to prevent it from expropriating all the results
of
economic growth for itselfor, worse still, from profiting from a progressive
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