The pressure for ever greater output from a limited supply of (especially skilled) labour gave rise as the war entered its third year, to a great drive, particularly by the Ministry of Aircraft Production for greater efficiency in the utilisation of labour. The need was greatest in those factories providing long runs of standard equipment, be it shells, rifles or radio sets.
With our more specialised equipment, in limited quantities, the need was not so great, nevertheless knowing that we were very receptive to new ideas, we were always roped in on these new developments. Time study, is, the measurement of the time needed to accomplish a given task, was noting new, but allied to the detailed study of the movements and motions needed to perform a task, it became what is now well known as "Time and Motion Study", which has been the cause of millions of lost working days since the war due to strikes and go-slow action.
I have always been opposed to piece work in industry, as I hold that it is the means most easily to hand for lazy or ignorant management to get greater output. Unfortunately, by encouraging workers to care only for quantity produced it draws attention away from quantity, other than in those cases where the product is the output of a machine, unaffected in any way by the operator.
This concentration on quantity creates the wrong attitude, both on the part of the worker and the management. The worker distrusts the time allocated for the operation by the Time Study man, and arguments about these "set" times involving shop stewards and management in ceaseless squabbles are still the bane of British Industry.
The development of Motion Study allies to job evaluation which is the analysis by trained observers, of the actual movements and activities needed to perform a task is a different kettle of fish. If the study is introduced at the drawing office stage, by an experienced methods engineer, there is some assurance that when the job gets to the shop floor, it will have the proper tools and aids to perform the task with minimum of effect in the most efficient way.
Then this happens, and in a proper working atmosphere, the time cycle largely looks after itself and the operator can now show interest in quality as well as quantity of output. One of the pioneers of Motion study was Ann Shaw, who was a protégé of Walter Symes, then manager of Metropolitan-Vickers Manchester, and I gather her organisation is still actively engaged on this and similar work.
One of the useful people brought in to further this work by the M.A.P. was Lord Marley; he was a man of considerable knowledge and experience, having originally been a Regular Army Officer in a technical branch, and as Major Leigh Ammon, he became a Labour MP and a Minister in Ramsey MacDonald's 1924 Parliament having been created a Peer in order to add to Labour's minimal representation in the Upper House.
Largely through his visits to Malmesbury and the discussions and exchange of views which took place over two or three years, I began to take more and more interest in the human as opposed to the technical problems of industry. Such matters as the choice of foreman and charge hands and their lack of training, the abuse of piece work systems, and last but not least the qualifications of managers, all began to assume a much greater importance, the more I looked into the matter. I quote here, from a lecture I gave to a meeting of managers and supervisors in Cheltenham in 1945 under the auspices of the Industrial Welfare Society.
"It is a sad reflection on the status of the industrial manager, that he can be appointed to manage a factory employing thousands without any qualifications in "man management", whereas before a doctor is allowed to treat a cold, he must follow a six year course of Medical School and Hospital training. Yet, the cold will almost invariably cure itself, whereas an inept works manager can, by his inability to handle people as "persons", not only bring his firm to bankruptcy, but be the cause of much mental illness and distress, affecting whole families in all grades of workers from superintendent to rank and file."
Enlightened – or just sensible – Board of Directors, have known this for ages, yet how often does one see adverts for managers specifying all kinds of knowledge and experience without mentioning the essential quality of being able to manage and lead people involved. Equally, the foreman, the member of management most closely in touch with the worker, is usually appointed for his technical skills rather than his ability to deal with people, and this in 1975! Yet, John Rochfeller is reported to have said seventy years ago "The ability to deal with people is a commodity like any other, and I will pay for that ability more than for any other commodity I know." The penalty for ignoring this common sense approach is today only too obvious.
Piece work against which I fought hard inside and outside the company in 1945 is still prevalent; British Leyland have had to pay dearly to transfer to day work and there is still a legacy of shop floor strife arising from disputed piece rates. From being years behind us in Labour industrial practices prior to the war, the United States is now years ahead in management training, Industrial Psychology and payment systems, and the fact that the US worker's output is two to three times what the British worker produces is directly related to our out-dated industrial practices which are, however themselves a reflection and legacy of the class divisiveness in British Society as a whole.
