A FAIR DAY'S WORK

Date01 June 1961
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1961.tb00154.x
Published date01 June 1961
A
FAIR
DAY’S
WORK
I.
THE
PROBLEM
BOULDING’
defines the task of the social scientist in regard to ethics as
that of teaching us
what moons we should not cry for
’.
He writes
:
The great object
of
social science,
as
of
all science, is
to
find out what
is
possible
’.
For not all ideals are capable of achievement. And per-
haps the vision of being able to base fairness
on
measurement is one of
these. Yet, we find that work-study engineers often conceive their
task
as
the measurement of
a
fair day’s work.2 And the concept
of
a
fair day’s work, as well as that of a
fair
day’s pay, plays an important
r81e
in
modem industrial society, both in wage-negotiations and
in
industrial disputes. The phrase is bandied about freely by trade unions
and managements and both sides think that they know what they are
talking about. Yet the
notion
of a fair day’s work is something of
a
will-o’-the-wispthe more closely one examines it, the more elusive
does it become.
This article examines some of the difficulties associated with the
use
of
this notion. It sketches briefly the nature
of
the difficulties, and
then explores the questions of how production standards are deter-
mined in practice, and how they are related to the ideal of a fair day’s
work.
A
fair
day’s work may be defined provisionally as the amount of
work which some ethical code demands
ought
to
be performed: the
amount which is neither too little nor too much, but right. Thus the
concept of a fair day’s work is an ethical concept concerned with
setting a standard for work conduct. Within this ethical frame of
reference work is viewed as an obligation, and the individual’s contri-
bution to society as an honest-a fair4ay’s work. The existence of
this goal makes itself felt in the form
of
strong moral pressures which
may
make us feel that we ought to be working when we are doing
‘K.
E.
Boulding,
The Organisationnl Revolution
(Harper
&
Bros., New
York, 1953), pp. xiv-xv.
2Compare for instance,
P.
Carroll, in the foreword to R. Presgrave.
The
Dynamics
of
Tiye Study
(McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1949,
pp. xv and xvi: continue to set up standards which purport
to
measure
a fair day’s work
,
and ‘a number of time-study men, engineers a?! con-
sultants are striving conscientiously to attain the fair measurement of a fair
day’s work”.’ And
T.
A.
Ryan and P. C. Smith,
Principles
of
,Zndustrial
Psychology
(Ronald Press Company, New York, 1954),
p.
346:
Jobs
are
timed and time standards set to determine what constitutes
a
fair amount
of work to be expected from a worker in a day.’
102
A
FAIR
DAY’S
WORK
103
n~thing.~ This does not mean that everybody necessarily accepts the
goal of
a
fair day’s work or experiences guilt feelings or responds
to
moral pressures. But all arguments about
a
fair day’s work (such as
are encountered in discussions between management and trade unions)
imply
a
conviction that there is a level
of
work which is right.
It
is
wrong
to
do
less than this, and
it
is
wrong (unfair) to ask people to do
more than this. These judgments are clearly normative
in
nature.
But
how
much
work is a fair day’s work? Here we deal with an
abstract concept which needs to be translated into concrete (preferably
quantitative) terms in order to be useful as a guide to conduct. Can
the notion be translated satisfactorily into standards for a day’s work,
and
if
so
how? How should a day’s work be envisaged,
in
terms of a
given output of results,
or
a given input
of
effort,
or
a given input of
time,
or
in
terms of a particular combination of these variables? This
is
the
basic problem and dilemma.
The problem of visualising what should constitute a day’s work is
encountered in all types of work, for it
is
universal, but
it
will
be
con-
sidered here mainly in relation to factory work.
It
must
be
stressed that visualising standards for a day’s work is not
merely an ethical problem; it is also an important economic and
managerial one. Production planning has to be based
on
some sort of
estimates
of
standards
of
production.
For
production standards affect
costs, prices and delivery dates, and
it
is
vital for management to have
control over these.
Yet the employment contract, concluded when a worker is engaged,
does not define the amount
of
work
a
worker is expected
to
do; all
it
does is
to
fix
a wage-rate,
to
lay down normal working hours, and to
stipulate the type
of
work to be done. The reason for this lack of
precision is uncertainty. The employer cannot define future tasks
clearly in advance.
He
needs flexibility to adjust to changing condi-
tions. Thus, what the employer purchases is not
a
given series of
services but
a
supply
of
effort for performing particular
types
of
ser-
vices involving changing work-assignments. He cannot define before-
hand the exact nature of these assignments, nor how often and how
quickly the same tasks will have
to
be performed.
Even when work
is
slack people may experience feelings of guilt because
they are doing nothing. For having no work to do conflicts
with
the individual’s
conception
of
the work situation and makes him or her feel uncomfortable.
Clerical staff, for instance, often feel restless and dissatisfied when they run
out
of
work; yet they may refuse
to
go home because they feel they ought
to be at work; there ought to be something they could do. Factory workers
too have been reported
to
have reacted against such situations by changing
their jobs.

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