Ford and Stalin. How to Live in Humaneness

facing the insoluble problem of justifying output norms while workers conceal their true abilities to the end of getting high wages from exceeding established norms.

Just these few mentioned ways of piecework’s destructive influence on the enterprise’s functioning are more than enough for a smart manager (or businessman) to start purposefully eliminating it at the enterprise he controls and in its functionally specialized structural units. But piecework is an enduring phenomenon, and in most cases if it is present at an enterprise it is evidence of a badly managed collective.

When the collective provides for the systemic integrity of an enterprise, taking into account the division of staff into productive, auxiliary (including technical and servicing perso

This system includes:

Basic salary — it is absolutely guaranteed. This money is paid for:

having one or several professions that are needed by the enterprise;

the level of qualification in each of the professions;

being ready to conscientiously carry out the orders of superior executives and support their activities on the basis of professional skills and knowledge.

However everything a salary is paid for is not actual work, not the products of labor but only a potential. That this potential is used is the responsibility not of the people who have this potential but on executives, on the entire hierarch of the enterprise’s management and the management of surrounding macroeconomic systems. This is the objective effect of the collective nature of labor in the systemic integrity of most enterprises.

Bonus is guaranteed by way of statistics, i.e. its amount can range from zero to the equivalent of several salaries and depends on many factors and indices of the enterprise’s work, the work of its units and each staff member. These factors are:

total volume of free profit and the way its comes in throughout the financial year;

assessment by superior executives the staff member’s personal contribution to the collective’s work during the time period which is remunerated (a month, a quarter, a year);

how important this staff member is for the enterprise, judging from his past work and future perspective (this part of the bonus is usually formalized as personal increment in salary granted for long-service, qualification, possessing several professions, speaking foreign languages, ability to solve problems in extraordinary circumstances, etc.);

lump sum payments for special purposes in co

loans granted by the enterprise to its employees or remittance of previously granted loans in full or partially.[94]

The salary-bonus system of remuneration of labor operating at an enterprise for several years is characterized by the ratio «income received by way of salary» / «income received by way of various bonuses and personal increments», as well as by the ratio co

If the salary takes up a low share in the total income volume (esp e cially if the guaranteed salary e x ceeds the «living wage» acknowledged by the society only by a small amount or is smaller than the «li v ing wage»), this is a sign of covert slavery flourishing at the enterprise and therefore flourishing in the s o ciety which endures such enterprises and such businessmen.

If the share of bonus payments in staff members’ income is large and their salaries are small an employee’s welfare is secured by his ultimate loyalty to executives. It is only their opinion which determines whether he will get non-guaranteed bonus payments or not and what their size will be. When large share of bonus payments in total income becomes a system-forming factor it leads to creating and maintaining a system where staff members are personally dependent on executives and administration on the whole. Perso

Another extreme occurs when bonus payments account only for a small part of staff members’ income. This prevents them from being financially encouraged to put effort in getting higher qualifications, mastering several professions, improving manufacturing processes and work organization on their own accord. They are not interested in doing that because promotion to superior posts accompanied by rise in salary is determined for most staff members by natural biological and demographic factors. It ca

Let us also make special note here that we are speaking about the salary-bonus system of labor remuneration, not about pay by the hour or pay by the hour and bonus system. The two systems are essentially different though in some circumstances (for example, working on the conveyor belt) this difference is unclear. Yet there the difference between the systems exists. Pay by the hour remuneration system is based on paying for the time an employee spends at his place of work assuming that the employee is fully busy with work during this time. If the employee wishes to reduce the time he spends at his place of work as compared to the established norm to an extent permitted by the administration his pay will be reduced proportionally.

The salary-bonus system permits (but does not compel the administration to do it) that some categories of staff members can stay at their workplaces for a shorter time that is compulsory for the rest of staff if they keep up with the schedule of work assigned by executives and submit work in due time and quality. In such a case a shorter working time per working day after accomplishing the assigned task does not result in reduction in pay. On the contrary it is itself a kind of a bonus that many will prefer to a money increment.

Actually the salary-bonus system can be a better motivation towards the collective’s conscientious labor than the pay by the hour and bonus system or pay by the hour system, and it is far better than piecework payment. Because there are categories of employees whose volume of professional work is limited by the nature of manufacturing process and its rhythm (hourly, weekly, etc.) it will bring nothing but harm to the enterprises systemic integrity if they are forced to stay at their workplaces during the entire working day. The point is that they will have to imitate labor activity while staying at their workplaces. And imitating labor activity corrupts the imitators themselves, corrupts their associates who do work, gives rise to rows when some people accuse others of pretending to work while they actually work. It undermines the administration’s authority because when an employee has to pretend to work having no real work to do the utmost folly of its executives of all ranks and its inability to organize a coordinated and efficient activity of the collective becomes evident.

And team contract can be effective only within the salary-bonus system of labor remuneration. Such a contract assigns work to a team which is a small integral collective where work is distributed and co-ordinated between the members in an informal way, on the basis of personal comradeship, mutual aid and respect.