Wage quotes

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Henry_Ford

Wages

“There is nothing to running a business by custom – to saying: 'I pay the going rate of wages.' The same man would not so easily say: 'I have nothing better or cheaper to sell than any one has.' No manufacturer in his right mind would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do we hear so much talk about the 'liquidation of labour' and the benefits that will flow to the country from cutting wages – which means only the cutting of buying power and the curtailing of the home market? What good is industry if it be so unskillfully managed as not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question is more important than that of wages – most of the people of the country live on wages. The scale of their living – the rate of their wages – determines the prosperity of the country.”
  • Source: Henry Ford. A book. Entitled My Life and Work. Written by Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther. Published 1922, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Chapter VIII.

Adam_Smith

Wage Reduction

“When masters combine together in order to reduce the wages of their workmen, they commonly enter into a private bond or agreement not to give more than a certain wage under a certain penalty.”
  • Source: Adam Smith (1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London, England: ‎W. Strahan and T. Cadell. Book I chapter X.

Three Great Orders

“The whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country... naturally divides itself, it has already been observed, into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit. These are the three great, original, and constituent orders of every civilised society... The interest of the first of those three great orders, it appears from what has been just now said, is strictly and inseparably connected with the general interest of the society. Whatever either promotes or obstructs the one, necessarily promotes or obstructs the other... The interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the first... Employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society... But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary... The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two... The interest of the dealers... is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
  • Source: Adam Smith (1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London, England: ‎W. Strahan and T. Cadell. Book I chapter XI.

Frederick_Winslow_Taylor

Kindly Interest

“...in order to have any hope of obtaining the initiative of his workmen the manager must give some special incentive to his men beyond that which is given to the average of the trade. This incentive can be given in several different ways, as, for example, the hope of rapid promotion or advancement; higher wages, either in the form of generous piece-work prices or of a premium or bonus of some kind for good and rapid work; shorter hours of labor; better surroundings and working conditions than are ordinarily given, etc., and, above all, this special incentive should be accompanied by that personal consideration for, and friendly contact with, his workmen which comes only from a genuine and kindly interest in the welfare of those under him.”
  • Source: F.W. Taylor, 1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers. Chapter 1.

Shoshana_Zuboff

Share the Fruits

“Taylor believed it was necessary to share the fruits of such productivity increases and saw the differential piece-rate system, a central tenet of scientific management, as a method of uniting workers and managers in a bond of common interest. But incentive wages are devilishly hard to administer, and all too often, managers attracted to differential wage schemes succumbed to shortcuts that promised fast gains. Managers would frequently change piece rates as workers learned to meet the standards. This led to the complaints of overwork with which unions relentlessly dogged proponents of Taylorism. Scientific management frequently meant not only that individual effort was simplified (either because of labor-saving equipment or new organizational methods that fragmented tasks into their simplest components), but also that the pace of effort was intensified, thus raising the level of fatigue and stress.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 45. ISBN:0465032125.

Learning Environment

“The demands of a learning environment can reduce the psychological distance between the self and the organization because active engagement in the social processes associated with interpretation requires more extensive participation of the human personality. In a traditional approach to work organization, employees could be treated as objectively measurable bodies, and in return, they could give of their labor without giving of their selves. The human being as wage earner and the human being as subjective actor could remain separate.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 401. ISBN:0465032125.

Divergence of Interests

“Taylor had believed that the transcendent logic of science, together with easier work and better, more fairly determined wages, could integrate the worker into the organization and inspire a zest for production. Instead, the forms of work organization that emerged with scientific management tended to amplify the divergence of interests between management and workers.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 45. ISBN:0465032125.

Time Study Expert

“The time-study expert became the new focus of workers' antagonisms. Informal production quotas persisted and, in many cases, took on an overtly anti-management spirit. The union contract became the most important means for institutionalizing workers' instincts for self-preservation, as rationalization routed out the ordinary graces with which the workday had been laced. Concern over wages and hours, work rules, and working conditions began to replace the craftworker's culturally embedded practices of effort regulation. Overall, the purification of effort meant a heightened standard of labor discipline, and as such it widened the gulf between those who gave of their bodies in the service of production and those who did not.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 46. ISBN:0465032125.