Task work, also called "doing a stint," is nominally time work, with a penalty if a certain amount of product is not turned out within a given period. The agreement may be that, if the specified task is not done within the regular time, it must be completed in overtime without additional pay. This method has been extensively used in the ready-made clothing business in America, and is to some extent involved in many cases of wage payment in manufacturing.
§ 7. Piece work. Piece work of the simpler or ordinary kind is that where the payment varies according to the amount of the product, by some physical measurement, as yards of cloth woven, number of pieces turned on a lathe, or amount of type set by a printer. Usually careful inspection by some agent of the employer serves to keep the quality up to a certain standard. The rejected pieces are not paid for, and sometimes also the workmen are required to pay for the materials wasted by their poor work. Piece payment is con venient for home work, such as that of rural peasants weaving cloth for commission merchants or as that of tenement workers in cities. It is also employed very widely in the larger fac tories in textile and mechanical industries. Selling on com mission is a form of piece work.
In piece work the motive to activity is ever present to the worker, and generally the worker turns out a larger product when paid by the piece than when paid by time. The employer benefits by the more efficient use of his machinery and equipment, even when the price per piece is not reduced with the larger output per worker. The worker's earnings may increase rapidly under this plan; but as the manual dex terity acquired is usually of a very special kind which can be used only on one particular machine, the worker has little opportunity to resist a cut in his wages. For this reason and because of the undue strain upon the worker that often occurs, piece work is in many trades not favored by the workers.' § 8. Premium plans. Various modifications of piece work have been developed of late, all involving the features of a minimum task and of a premium for performance beyond that point. These plans are called "premium plans," "pro gressive wage systems," and "gain sharing." One of the first of these, Halsey's premium plan, fixes a standard time for a job, and if the worker falls short of, or merely attains to, that standard he gets the regular pay; but if he takes less than the standard time he receives a fixed premium per hour equal to one third of the wage for the time saved. For example, if the standard time is 10
hours for a $3 job the premium for speed is ten cents per hour, and the worker would receive 20 cents premium if he did the work in 8 hours ($2.40 20, total $2.60), and 50 cents premium if he did it in 5 hours ($1.50 + 50, total $2.00). His average wage per hour thus rises as his speed increases; it becomes 32.5 cents per hour when the job is done in 8 hours, and 40 cents per hour when the job is done in 5 hours. The reduction of cost per job to the employer evi dently would be 40 cents in the first case and $1 in the second. This is Halsey's plan, by which the worker gets one third and the employer two-thirds of the time saved.
The same plan has been applied (Weir's method) with a premium that equally divides between the workman and the employer the time saved. By Rowan's method the premium is not a fixed sum but a percentage of the standard rate per hour equal to the percentage of reduction in time consumed. If in the foregoing example the time were reduced 20 per cent (to 8 hours) the premium would be 20 per cent of 30 cents, and the workman would receive 36 cents per hour. By this plan the premium is larger for the earlier reduc tions in time and becomes less for the later reductions than in either of the other plans.
*See ch. 21, 4 6.
By Halsey's plan the employer gets two thirds of the total saving in time, by Weir's plan one half, and by Rowan's a percentage varying directly in the ratio of the time saved.
A number of other variations have been worked out by the promoters of recent scientific management, notable ones be ing Taylor's, Gantt's, and Emerson's plans. The authors of all these plans agree as to the importance of fixing the standard rate so that it will leave a possibility of consider able improvement with unusual effort, and of leaving the standard rate and premium unchanged as long as no new process or new machinery is introduced into the business. If this is not done the employees lose faith in the plan and refuse to make the necessary effort to earn the premium. Most of these plans of payment recently have been connected with experiments and studies in scientific management to re duce the time and increase the ease of the operations.