The labor standard., 1919-06-01
Workers Deny Existing Idea That They Constitute Mere
 Commodity.
JOINT COUNCILS, IS DEMAND
Delegates of Employees and Represen- tatives of the Management, Talking Over Common Interests, Would Pre- mote Harmony Between Capital and Labor.
WILL PAYNE.


 If you turn to the causes of labor's dissatisfaction one thing stands out all over aside from the question of wages. The last national convention of the American Federation of Labor em- phasized 1t. 1t continually crops out in labor's actions and utterances. The gist of 1t is that labor is not satisfied. and never will be satisfied, to be treat ed just as a commodity-something taken into the shop at the market rate when the shop has need of it. used impersonally in the processes of pro- duction, and dismissed whenever the shop. at the moment, has no further need of 1t, with nothing in particular to say about the industrial conditions un- der which it is used except as to the price it shall get, very much as so many carloads of raw cotton or pig iron are taken in.
 Labor is decidedly not satisfied with that role. Innumerable quarrels and strikes over shop conditions, dis charges. discipline and so on, have ing treated like commodity instead of like sentient humanity. The best eff f1ciency engineers-former scientific managers"-understa that and have worked on it with good results. For example, it is found that delegates elected by the work people and meeting frequently with representatives of the management to talk over common fn- terests promotes harmony. It is found that such delegates, under free and friendly discussion, very often accept the management's view. Or, leaving it to committee of workmen to pass on faulty work, gets fair judgment in the main and the working force accepts them, whereas it was always protesting against the judgments of managerial committee.
 The rule is that to bring shop and office into closer touch and a steady practice of sitting down and talking things over makes for harmony. To give labor a say, to hear it's side-not once a year when . wage scale is to be fixed, but all the time, by frequent meetings-makes for harmony.
 A recent dispatch to the New York Journal of Commerce said that joint councils or committees had now been formed in TO trades or groups of trades. It is a recognition of labor's demand to have it's say, to be consulted and for broader, more direct look-in on the industry by which it lives. It is a protest against the idea of labor as a commodity. with nothing to say except as to what it's market price shall be. It is move in the direction of partnership between capital and labor.
 Now, partnership is the true relation between capital and labor. Neither can get on we'll without the other. Both prosper or decline alike from the same general conditions. Employers are al- ways preaching that, especially when threatened with a strike. They must put it more extensively into practice. You don't take man into partnership when you sit down alone and decide what you are going to do for him and then open the window and tell him while he. peradventure, is sitting down alone and deciding what he is going to do to you and then throwing brick through the window to let you know.