Labor in the Twentieth Century

334 Pages·1978·17.576 MB·English

by  John T. Dunlop, Walter Galenson

This is a volume in
STUDIES IN LABOR ECONOMICS
Richard Freeman, Series Editor
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Labor in the
Twentieth Century
Edited by
JOHN T. DUNLOP
Department of Economics
and
Graduate School of Business Administration
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
WALTER GALENSON
Department of Economics
and
New York State School of Industrial and
Labor Relations
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
ACADEMIC PRESS New York San Francisco London
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Labor in the twentieth century.
(Studies in labor economics ; v. 1)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Labor and laboring classes—History—Case studies.
2. Trade-unions—History—Case studies. 3. Industrial
relations—History—Case studies. I. Dunlop, John
Thomas (Date) II. Galenson, Walter (Date)
III. Series.
HD4854.L26 33Γ.09Ό4 78-3335
ISBN 0-12-224350-1
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
78 79 80 81 82 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contnbutions begin.
JOHN T. DUNLOP (1), Department of Economics and Graduate School of
Business Administration, Harvard University Cambridge, Massachu­
setts 02163
WALTER GALENSON (11), Department of Economics and New York
State School of Industrial Labor Relations, Cornell University, Ithaca,
Ithaca, New York 14853
HANS GÜNTER (149), International Institute for Labour Studies, Post-
ale 6, CH-1211 Geneva 22, Switzerland
L. C. HUNTER (85), Department of Social and Economic Research, Univer­
sity of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, United Kingdom
GERHARD LEMINSKY (149), Economic and Social Research Institute of the
German Trade Union Confederation, 4 Dusseldorf 1, The Federal Re­
public of Germany
FRANCOIS SELLIER (197), Les Erables 63, 55 Boulevard de Charonne,
75011 Paris, France
HARUO SHIMADA (241), Department of Economics, Keio University,
2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
TAISHIRO SHIRAI* (241), The Japan Institute of Labour, Chutaikin Build­
ing, 7-6 Shibakoen 1-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan 105
♦Present Address: Faculty of Business Administration, Hosei University 2-17-1 Fujimi-cho,
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan 102
vii
viii I Contributors
ROBERT S. SMITH (11), Department of Labor Economics, New York State
School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, Ithaca, New
York 14853
A. W. J. THOMSON (85), Department of Social and Economic Research,
University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, United Kingdom
Labor in the Twentieth Century
INTRODUCTION
JOHN T. DUNLOP
THE WORKER'S CENTURY
A reader of this volume must conclude that the twentieth century is
likely to be known as the century of the worker or of the employee in ad­
vanced democratic societies. Unprecedented improvements in the living
standards, social status, economic security, political power, and influence of
industrial workers have occurred in this century. In taking the measure of
this epoch, however, it should not be forgotten that this century generated
at least two periods of world wide warfare.
Sumner H. Slichter enunciated something of the same theme in 1948
when he said
the United States is gradually shifting from a capitalist community to a
laboristic one, that is a community in which employees rather than busi­
nessmen are the strongest single influence. A community in which em­
ployees are the principal influence will have its own way of looking at
things, its own scale of values, its own ideas on public policies, and, to some
extent, its own jurisprudence.1
One of the great merits of the perspective of a century is that underly­
ing tendencies and fundamentals stand out in sharper focus. Cyclical
phases and climacteric events in the aftermath of war, depression, or social
upheavals, as occurred in the later 1960s in many countries, are more soberly
perceived and assessed. Moreover, the first three-quarters of the century
provide a desirable frame of reference to consider the course of develop­
ments out to the year 2000, recognizing that simple extrapolations are
seldom warranted.
'Sumner H. Slichter, "Are We Becoming a 'Laboristic' State?" New York Times, 16 May
1948. Reprinted in Potentials of the Amencan Economy, Selected Essays of Sumner H. Slichter, by
John T. Dunlop (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 255.
1
Labor in the Twentieth Century Copyright © 1978 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISBN 0-12-224350-1
2 / John T. Dunlop
The comparative method of reviewing labor in five advanced demo­
cratic countries has the further reward of helping to highlight both the
common elements and the distinctive features of each country during this
remarkable period for the worker and the employee.
A common initial outline was adopted for each chapter, although each
author was urged to stress those elements and develop those themes that
were of particular significance to his country. Every chapter contains statis­
tical series, carried as far back to the start of the century as the data permit
for employment, unemployment, wages, hours, and labor disputes. The
growth and operation of labor organizations, collective bargaining institu­
tions, the political activities of labor, and labor legislation are common
features. Each chapter also seeks to identify the major future problems and
prospects.
LIVING STANDARDS
Despite very different starting dates in industrial development, and
quite diverse policies of industrializing elites, not to mention differential
rates of growth in particular decades, unprecedented changes in the eco­
nomic and social status of ordinary workers have taken place in these five
countries in the twentieth century. The magnitude of these changes is
without an historical parallel, and such changes do not seem likely to be
repeated on the scale of this century.2 These changes occurred in the
process of industrialization. "The industrial system everywhere has its
managers, its managed and a pattern of interaction between them." 3
1. Workers and employees have become quantitatively the largest
component by far in economic activity. Moreover, their absolute numbers
have also grown rapidly with natural population increase and, in some of
these countries, with immigration or temporary migration in some periods.
Workers and employees are numerically dominant.
The production structure, to use Kuznets's 4 term, reflects significant
relative declines in employment in agriculture and the primary sector.
Correspondingly, there have been marked relative increases of workers
2For some purposes in some countries a different 100-year span, such as 1860-1960,
might produce even larger changes. But this perspective utilizes an even century in the Grego­
rian calendar for all countries in the comparison.
3Clark Kerr, John T. Dunlop, Frederick Harbison, and Charles A. Myers, Industrialism
and Industrial Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 15. Also see by the same
authors, Industnalism and Industrìal Man Reconsidered (Inter-University Study of Human Re­
sources in Rational Development, Final Report, Princeton, N.J., 1975).
4Simon Kuznets, Economic Growth of Nations, Total Output and Production Structure (Cam­
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 309-313.
Introduction I 3
and employees in the service sector and public employment, with small or
larger relative increases in the goods-producing industries.
The participation of women, particularly married women, in wage and
salary employment has grown significantly in most countries, particularly
in the post-World War II period. These changes are said to be related to
higher education levels, smaller family size, reduced hours of work, rise in
clerical and service occupations, and other factors.
There have also been significant changes in occupations associated
with reshaping the production structure, as in the relative decline in ag­
ricultural laborers and domestic servants and in the growth of professional,
technical, and administrative as well as clerical and service employees.
2. The compensation of workers and employees, after allowing for
changes in consumer prices, has increased dramatically thus far in this
century. E. H. Phelps Brown has documented this point in his outstanding
studies of a closely related hundred years. "In the short span of time since
the Fourth Ice Age, men have achieved two bursts of technical progress so
concentrated and extensive that they deserve to be called Revolutions. One
was the Neolithic Revolution, that came about ten thousand or more years
ago. The other was the Industrial Revolution." 5
In the 75 years after 1900 it would appear that real wages increased on
the order of 3 to 5 times among the five countries. (Brown's data for the
100 years from 1860 to 1960 range between 4 and 6.5 times for four of the
five countries common to these two volumes.6)
The rise in real wages was accompanied by marked reductions in the
average hours of work. In the 75 years after 1900 it would appear that
weekly hours worked were reduced in a range of 25 to 35% among these
countries. The scheduled weekly hours now converge around 40 hours or a
little less.
There also has been a significant shift in the lifetime distribution of
education, work, and leisure. In the United States, for instance, life expec­
tancy for men in 1900 was 48.2 years—10.0% spent in preschool, 16.6% in
school, 66.6% at work, and 6.5% in retirement. By 1970 life expectancy for
men had risen to 67.1 years—7.4% in preschool, 18.0% in school, 59.7% at
work, and 14.8% in retirement. The rise in life expectancy and the greater
fraction of time spent in education and in retirement, with a smaller frac­
tion of time at work, is a notable measure of the change in the status of male
workers and employees.7
5E. H. Phelps Brown with Margaret H. Browne, A Century of Pay, The Course of Pay and
Production in France, Germany, Sweden, The United Kingdom, and the United States of America,
1860-1960 (London: Macmillan, 1968), p. 25.
«Ibid., p. 31.
7Fred Best and Barry Stern, "Education, Work and Leisure: Must They Come in that
Order?" Monthly Labor Review, July 1977, p. 4.
4 I John T. Dunlop
3. The average number of years spent in education has increased
sharply in the period after 1900, and the fraction of the age group going on
to higher education has increased very sharply, particularly since World
War II. The access to higher education has become more generally avail­
able in these societies over the period studied. Chapter 5 describes the
active role of education and manpower training in Japan as an important
policy tool deliberately used to achieve the goal of industrialism in that
economy.
4. In the perspective of the period since 1900, there appears to be no
discernible trend in the average rate of unemployment. If any tendency
emerges in these countries, it is for a decline in the variability of unem­
ployment rates around the mean.
5. All of the five countries examined have become welfare states with a
spectrum of public policies designed to protect workers, employees, and
citizens generally, from the risks of illness, retirement, accidents, dis­
abilities, involuntary idleness and to facilitate housing, training, and other
assistance.
It is difficult, at best, by resorting to these generalizations or by refer­
ence to the detailed statistical series for the separate countries to capture
fully the quality of the changes in the economic status of workers and
employees. Another means is to refer to autobiographical material and
reports on the conditions of life and work at the turn of the nineteenth
century and to make comparisons with today. 8
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND
POLITICAL ROLE
In the twentieth century, labor unions have established a secure place
in the economies and societies of these five countries, despite the wartime
repressions that occurred in three of them. As is discussed in Chapter 3,
unions in Germany "tend to see themselves as a central part of the demo­
cratic infrastructure." The role of labor organizations in the economic,
industrial relations, and political lives of these countries today stands in
8While the representativeness of individual reports are open to question, such social
history can be a useful supplement to general data. See, for instance, Eli Ginzberg and Hyman
Berman, The Amencan Worker in the Twentieth Century, A History Through Autobiographies (Glen-
coe, 111.: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp. 27-144. For a more general type of presenta­
tion, see, Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress, Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964) and The Other Bostonians, Poverty and Progress in
the Amencan Métropoles, 1880-1970 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). For the
British condition, see, E. H. Phelps Brown, The Growth of Bntish Industnal Relations, A Study from
the Standpoint of 1906-1914 (London: Macmillan, 1959), pp. 1-113.
Introduction I 5
marked contrast to the weaknesses and restraints that characterized their
positions in 1900.
In the mid-1970s these five countries—all leading powers of the demo­
cratic world—had an aggregate population of almost 500 million, with a
combined labor force of approximately 220 million, one-fourth of whom
were reported to be members of labor unions. The figures ranged among
countries from approximately 20 to 45%. At the turn of the century, the
range was more likely to have been 5 to 10% of the labor force. Moreover,
the meaning of being a member of union has changed significantly over the
years since 1900.
In the mid-1970s in England and West Germany labor parties and
their political allies constituted the governments; in France and Japan the
unions were mainly allied with the parliamentary opposition to the elected
governments; in the United States the unions were not as formally related
to political parties as in the other four countries, but sought to use their
considerable electoral and lobbying influence for particular candidates or
legislation. In all these countries, unions had grown to be a power in the
economy and polity.
The chapters in this volume underscore the importance of the back­
ground of the industrialization process in a particular country, the policies
of the industrializing elites, and wartime transformations in shaping the
distinguishing features of the industrial relations system and its political
role at formative stages in each country.9
The speed of industrialization and the need to attract labor in a
sparsely populated country, or to recruit and train a labor force from
agriculture, or acquire it through immigration are shown to be significant
factors in an industrial relations system at various stages in Japan, Ger­
many, France, and the United States.
As is stated in Chapter 2, "the influence of history has been stronger in
Britain than elsewhere. . . . Britain had the most evolutionary system of
industrial relations in the twentieth century."
The trauma of war and its aftermath were decisive in shaping the
current arrangements in both Japan and West Germany, while in Chapter
4, reference is made to the "rapidity of the social transformation that has
taken place in France since World War II."
The attitudes of employers toward workers, unions, and employer
associations as well seem to have been influential in shaping industrial
relations. In Britain, "employer associations were less antiunion than those
in other countries [Chapter 2 of this volume]."
There appear to be differences among countries based on whether
labor organizations created political parties (as in England) or political
9John T. Dunlop, Industrial Relations Systems, 1958, (Arcturus Books Edition, Carbondale
and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977).